ANN: Consuming medical care, new working papers
Three new working papers discussing the consumption of
medical care and services in England, the Netherlands and Venice between the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries are now available:
Teerapa Pirohakul, Patrick Wallis, 'Medical Revolutions? The growth of medicine in England, 1660-1800' (LSE Economic History WP 185, 2014)
This paper studies demand for commercial medical assistance in early modern England. We measure individual consumption of medical and nursing services using a new dataset of debts at death between c.1670-c.1790. Levels of consumption of medical services were high and stable in London from the 1680s. However, we find rapid growth in the provinces, in both the likelihood of using medical assistance, and the sums spent on it. The structure of medical services also shifted, with an increase in ‘general practice’, particularly by apothecaries. The expansion in medical services diffused from London, and was motivated by changing preferences, not wealth http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2014/WP185.pdf.
Alex Bamji, 'Medical Care in Early Modern Venice' (LSE Economic History WP 188, 2014)
In early modern Venice, a wide range of people offered care, goods and services for the health of the city’s numerous inhabitants. This study utilises Venice’s civic death registers to assess when and why the sick and dying accessed medical care, and how this changed over the course of the early modern period. The detailed registers permit consideration of the profile of medical practitioners, key aspects of patient identity, the involvement of institutions in the provision of medical care, and the relationship between type of illness and the propensity of the sufferer to seek medical support. This study assesses the type, number, density and distribution of practitioners in the city. It demonstrates that recourse to medical care was largely determined by age, social status and type of illness. The lack of financial resources or family support did not preclude access to medical care, due to a web of institutions which offered care to a diverse clientele. http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2014/WP188.pdf
Heidi Deneweth, Patrick Wallis, 'Should we call for a doctor? Households, consumption and the development of medical care in the Netherlands, 1650-1900' (CGEH WP51, 2014)
This article examines the Dutch medical marketplace between 1650 and 1900 from a household’s perspective, based on the probate inventories database of the Meertens Institute. It offers the first quantitative analysis of demand for medical care in small towns and villages across the Netherlands. Our findings offer a substantial contrast to the well-known medical market in the Netherland’s major cities and might be more representative for general European patterns. We observe that different usage of medical care bears similarity to the households’ income, level of monetisation and engagement in commercial activities and other forms of non-essential consumption. While the pre-industrial era showed very outspoken differences in medical consumption between the commercialised maritime part of the Netherlands and the more autarchic inland region, patterns of medical consumption converged during the nineteenth century. These findings suggest that demand set a basic boundary for the further development of medical supply. http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/CGEHWP51_Deneweth%20Wallis_5.pdf
Teerapa Pirohakul, Patrick Wallis, 'Medical Revolutions? The growth of medicine in England, 1660-1800' (LSE Economic History WP 185, 2014)
This paper studies demand for commercial medical assistance in early modern England. We measure individual consumption of medical and nursing services using a new dataset of debts at death between c.1670-c.1790. Levels of consumption of medical services were high and stable in London from the 1680s. However, we find rapid growth in the provinces, in both the likelihood of using medical assistance, and the sums spent on it. The structure of medical services also shifted, with an increase in ‘general practice’, particularly by apothecaries. The expansion in medical services diffused from London, and was motivated by changing preferences, not wealth http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2014/WP185.pdf.
Alex Bamji, 'Medical Care in Early Modern Venice' (LSE Economic History WP 188, 2014)
In early modern Venice, a wide range of people offered care, goods and services for the health of the city’s numerous inhabitants. This study utilises Venice’s civic death registers to assess when and why the sick and dying accessed medical care, and how this changed over the course of the early modern period. The detailed registers permit consideration of the profile of medical practitioners, key aspects of patient identity, the involvement of institutions in the provision of medical care, and the relationship between type of illness and the propensity of the sufferer to seek medical support. This study assesses the type, number, density and distribution of practitioners in the city. It demonstrates that recourse to medical care was largely determined by age, social status and type of illness. The lack of financial resources or family support did not preclude access to medical care, due to a web of institutions which offered care to a diverse clientele. http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2014/WP188.pdf
Heidi Deneweth, Patrick Wallis, 'Should we call for a doctor? Households, consumption and the development of medical care in the Netherlands, 1650-1900' (CGEH WP51, 2014)
This article examines the Dutch medical marketplace between 1650 and 1900 from a household’s perspective, based on the probate inventories database of the Meertens Institute. It offers the first quantitative analysis of demand for medical care in small towns and villages across the Netherlands. Our findings offer a substantial contrast to the well-known medical market in the Netherland’s major cities and might be more representative for general European patterns. We observe that different usage of medical care bears similarity to the households’ income, level of monetisation and engagement in commercial activities and other forms of non-essential consumption. While the pre-industrial era showed very outspoken differences in medical consumption between the commercialised maritime part of the Netherlands and the more autarchic inland region, patterns of medical consumption converged during the nineteenth century. These findings suggest that demand set a basic boundary for the further development of medical supply. http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/CGEHWP51_Deneweth%20Wallis_5.pdf