Walking London's Medical History Second Edition

by Nick Black

Overview

Highly Commended, BMA Medical Book Awards 2013

The history of health care is complex, confusing, and contested. It involves more than just the creation of hospitals and dispensaries, infirmaries, and health centers. There are also royal colleges, trades unions, medical schools, nurses’ homes, coroners’ courts, nursing sisterhoods, ambulance stations, patients’ organizations, and medical missions.

Usually, to enhance our understanding we sit and read books, or, nowadays, surf the Internet. But it’s more fun to go out, visit the buildings where events unfolded and transport yourself back in time. The story of how health care has developed from medieval times to the present day is told through seven walks in central London, each with a key theme, such as:

• Competition between the church, crown, and city for control
• Changing fortunes of particular districts
• Radical reform between 1840 and 1880
• Individual creativity and entrepreneurship
• Hospitals’ unavoidable choice between merger or migration
• Transformation of health care trades into professions
• Development of primary care

The book takes as much interest in one of the six ambulance stations build in 1915 by the London County Council as it does in the grandest teaching hospital. Although some important buildings have been destroyed, and others are threatened, many remain. The walks aim to help preserve our legacy as, increasingly, former health care buildings are converted into hotels, offices, homes, and shops. Awareness of their original functions is in danger of being lost. The book also aims to increase our understanding of the current challenges we face in trying to improve health care. For there are many lessons to be learnt from the past.

Packed full of curious and surprising facts about medicine and beautifully illustrated with maps, photographs, and images, this is the perfect guide book for anyone with a passion for urban walks, the history of London, and, of course, medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781000515497
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	09/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	37 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Nick Black is professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine (University of London). He is one of the leading academics in the UK on health services, having published several books and over 200 articles in medical journals. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Health Services Research&Policy, a leading international journal, and edited a series of 20 books on understanding public health. He advises the Department of Health on quality assessment and chairs the National Advisory Group for Clinical Audit&Enquiries. Apart from health care policy, his interests include history, architecture, cooking, and Arsenal. He is married and lives in north London.

Table of Contents

The history of health care. Church, Crown and City - Covent Garden (4.8 km; 2.5 hours). The lost hospitals of St Luke's - St Luke's (3.7 km; 1.5 hours). A cradle of reform - St Pancras & Bloomsbury (3.5 km; 2 hours). The challenging isle - Soho (2.9 km; 1.5 hours). Merge or move - Fitzrovia (4.6 km; 2 hours). From trades to professions - Marylebone (4.5 km; 2 hours). 'Merrie Islington' to 'the contagion of numbers' - Finsbury (2.6 km 1.5 hours) & Islington (3.8 km; 2 hours). Motoring tour: No city is an island - north and east Kent (160 miles; 3 days by car).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An anatomy upon the historical body of London"
—Peter Ackroyd

"With teasing asides about the scandals and intrigues of London's medical history ... Black reveals a little known aspects of the capital's past in a manner both informative and fun, accessible whether you have a medical background or not. Walks you'll actually want to go on."
—Tom Lamont, Editor, Time Out: London for Londoners

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer:This is a delightful book. One need not go to London or take a single one of the seven walks to learn from this most attractive book. I especially enjoyed the modern photographs — sharp and crisp — and the historic photographs and images from nineteenth-century magazines and other engravings. The book contains no bibliography of source material, but that does not detract from its stated purposes. There is a helpful index.
Description:
Purpose:As the title indicates, this is a guide for walking tours of medical history in London, but it is far more than that. It is, in fact, a history of medicine. For instance, when the author discusses the leprosy hospitals, he includes a lengthy sidebar about the history of various treatments for leprosy and where the London institutions fit in this chronology. He also discusses important personalities who shaped medical history in London.
Audience:This book has three purposes: to provide seven walks in central London to places of interest in medical history; to preserve the legacy of these historic places because many of them occupy valuable land in the city and are increasingly being converted into other uses; and to use the past as a means of understanding our current and future challenges in health care improvement. The author satisfies these purposes admirably.
Features:This would be valuable for medical students taking an elective course in medical history, but these seven walks cannot be completed in one day. A medical professional with the financial means and adequate time — for instance, a retired health practitioner — would benefit the most from this book. The author is professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the University of London and a widely published scholar in the area of the history of medicine.
Assessment:He presents clear graphics to show the walk routes, labeling key streets and venues and identifying the closest underground stations for the beginning and end of the tours. His specific instructions are printed in blue and stand out from the normal black text. Once he takes you to a specific destination, he provides a history of what occurred there, and he tells you about the major personages who were instrumental in the establishment or development of the place. He provides in-text cross-references, highlighting these in red and providing parenthetically the page numbers where the reader can find the cross-references.

"An anatomy upon the historical body of London"
—Peter Ackroyd

"With teasing asides about the scandals and intrigues of London's medical history ... Black reveals little-known aspects of the capital's past in a manner both informative and fun, accessible whether you have a medical background or not. Walks you'll actually want to go on."
—Tom Lamont, Editor, Time Out: London for Londoners

From the Publisher