ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on health care provision and poor relief in north and south of Europe developed along different routes during and after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. A new approach to poor relief and health care across northern Europe is offered to historians by Marco van Leeuwen. He concentrates on analysing historic events of health care and poor relief in terms of modern concern with calculating individual and group actions in terms of risk. This approach tends to highlight not only state moves towards providing general health care and poor relief, but also voluntary alternatives to poor relief which continued to exist – in other words, it stresses so-called 'mixed economy of welfare'. The survey of health care and poor relief in different states begins in German-speaking states of northern Europe, starting with Prussia. Russia promised to be an enlightened state on Western model with respect to poor relief and health care for poor under guidance of Peter the Great.
