ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on hospitals in the context of England and the United States. It aims to quote patients’ experiences whenever possible, but most patients, particularly in the earlier periods of the twentieth century, were unlikely to create a direct record of their care, and discussions of their hospital experience must of necessity be largely inferential. During much of the nineteenth century, most patients who entered the hospital were poor; a person of means would never dream of entering a hospital for care, even for the most serious injuries or for a surgical procedure. By the 1920s, most people had come to see hospitals as central for health care. Private patients came in with some regularity. With increasing urbanization, more people lived close to hospitals. Hospitals in parts of the world other than the United States and Western Europe have presented a very different picture during the twentieth century, both to the outside observer and to the patients within.
