ABSTRACT
Most health care happens at home; the most expensive health care happens in hospital. Hospitals remain the core training locale for biomedicine and for nursing. There are however a number of intermediate locales where both treatment and training take place. As Armstrong (1985) has pointed out, the modern GP surgery or health centre nowadays has been removed from the domestic domain, but its purpose is to treat patients who will follow the regime prescribed in their own homes. Alternatively they may be referred onward for specialist consultation and possible treatment in hospital. But large numbers of people treat their ailments themselves, at least in the first instance, often acquiring over-the-counter medicaments for the purpose. In the UK something like two-thirds of drugs used in people’s homes are bought over the counter (Dunnell and Cartwright, 1972; Wadsworth, Butterfield and Blaney, 1971; and see the summary and discussion in Blum with Kreitman, 1981).
