Health and medicine in Britain since 1860

Since 1860, life expectancies and standards of general health have improved dramatically in industrialized societies.

In the 1860s, there was little that medicine could do to cure or prevent illness, death rates were high and life expectancy short.

This work sets out to examine the relationship between health and medicine and how it has changed in Britain over a period of 150 years.

From the placebo effect and Viagra, through changes in society and in the organization, practice and expertise of medicine, it reviews the processes through which modern expectations of health have become established.