ABSTRACT
Competition drove the dynamics of the eighteenth-century London medical milieu. Individual healers competed for paying patients, and charitably-funded institutions competed for benefactors’ support.1 Benefactors could choose between a variety of different types of charity, delivered in a variety of ways by a number of competing organisations. Benefactors who wished to support a charity designed primarily to cure the sick poor, for example, could support charities treating the sick poor in their own homes, or choose between a number of competing hospitals.
