ABSTRACT
For reasons which continue to be a matter of controversy, the rate of growth of the population of Britain accelerated after the mid-eighteenth century to a level which was without historical precedent. The accumulation of productive capital, and thereby employment opportunities, took place predominantly in a relatively small number of urban areas because of the natural resource and climatic advantages of specific locations or because of the economies of proximity to existing suppliers and markets. The developments in capitalist urbanisation contained certain contradictions for capitalism itself, that is, they nurtured from within the social formation threats to its growth and even its stability. Medical science, and medical opinion even more so, was at this time a terrain of great ignorance. The horizontal axis measures the use-value of the dwelling which, given the organisation and labour productivity of the housebuilding industry, determines the capital cost of constructing the house and the current cost of maintaining it.
