ABSTRACT
A key feature of the history of health care has been the battles between practitioners over the boundaries between each occupation: who they can treat, what treatments they can use, what they can charge for. Doctors recognised the need to migrate west to stay near their sources of income. Marylebone became home not only to the leading practitioners, but also to the organisations that were to play key roles in the development of the health care professions. Marylebone has been not only the centre of professional development in England, but also the location of two other significant developments in health care. Marylebone also illustrates the important role that charity has played in supporting health care research and policy and service development. The Medical Society of London was the first general society in England. By the 1850s criticism of the inadequacies of the Poor Law system to meet the needs of the poor was mounting.
