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  • Article

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

  • Article

The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.

  • Article

The father of handwashing

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

  • Book extract

Why the NHS is worth saving

In this extract from his latest book, ‘Free For All’, Dr Gavin Francis poses challenging questions to be addressed if a health service that’s free for all at the point of use is to remain possible.

All stories (15)

Images

  • Vital statistics : a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr / edited for the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain by Noel A. Humphreys.
  • The Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland...History of the institute: 1877-1914 / comp. by direction of the Council of the Institue, by Richard B. Pilcher...secretary.
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Report to Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842 / [by Edwin Chadwick].
  • Journal of science and the arts / Royal Institution of Great Britain.
  • Journal of science and the arts / Royal Institution of Great Britain.
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