ABSTRACT
The ways in which medical knowledge and the popular response to it changed from the medieval period up to the mid-twentieth century have been discussed in previous chapters. In the next three chapters we will look at what has happened to concepts of health, illness and healing in the second half of this century, starting with lay concepts. (Concepts associated with reproduction will be dealt with later in Chapter 17.) This was the period when the Welfare State was established and biomedicine came to be provided on a mass basis throughout all advanced industrial societies, albeit the mode of its financing and administration varied.
