Hospitals and Public Health: Control, Exploitation and the Development of Medical Knowledge

The English hospital system developed in a fragmented way. This chapter will trace how, by the end of the nineteenth century, a complex array of hospital provision had developed. The voluntary hospital movement continued, gaining greater momentum after 1850. Voluntary hospitals treated the deserving poor, Poor Law hospitals the paupers (i.e. the undeserving poor); asylums separated the insane and isolation hospitals the infectious.