ABSTRACT
One of the outstanding results of the advance in medicine during the 18th century was the foundation of hospitals and dispensaries. The medieval hospitals for the sick were swept away at the Reformation with other monastic institutions, London alone was powerful enough to obtain the refounding of the great hospitals of St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas. In the provinces the hospital and the dispensary were often combined, indeed one often grew out of the other. Many provincial hospitals were originally founded as dispensaries, while in other cases hospitals started dispensaries, really forerunners of the modern out-patients' departments. The dispensary doctor learnt at first hand "how the poor lived" and the writings of the London dispensary doctors in the early 19th century give us a vivid description of the health conditions of the poor and of the valiant efforts made to combat disease.
