Abstract

In Britain before 1911, the vast majority of the population provided medical care for themselves and had evolved a variety of schemes that checked the power of organized medicine and encouraged a steady improvement in standards. The evidence is that at the end of the nineteenth century about 5–6 percent of the population relied on the poor law, 10–15 percent on free care from charitable institutions, 75 percent on mutual aid, and the remainder paid fees to private doctors.