ABSTRACT
The connection between military conflict and changes in health care can be traced back at least as far as the CrimeanWar, including the changes in the nursing profession that flowed from Florence Nightingale's experiences of military hospitals. A parallel inter-relationship between war and welfare was the inflation associated with the First World War, subsequently identified as one factor in pricing the least well off out of the housing market, precipitating rent control and contributing to the end of working-class house building as a profitable enterprise. The solution to the haphazard and extremely variable quality of existing hospital services was a significant degree of central government control and expenditure through the Emergency Medical Services. The effects of the EMS had almost the proportions of a revolution. The importance of the Beveridge Report for a future NHS lay in its refusal to restrict itself to a simple tidying up of the Poor Law legacy of cash benefits.
