Public and Private Medicine in the 1940s

Abstract

Many histories of the National Health Service have been written and the chronological details are well known. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the transition from a largely ‘private’ system of self-help, voluntary activity and commercial endeavour to a public health service. It examines the arguments in favour of a service provided on the basis of need rather than ability to pay and at the vestiges of private medicine which remained when the NHS came into being.