Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe

by Grell,Ole Peter

• ISBN13: 9780754602750
• ISBN10: 0754602753
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Throughout history governments have had to confront the problem of how to deal with the poorer parts of their population. During the medieval and early modern period this responsibility was largely borne by religious institutions, civic institutions and individual charity. By the eighteenth century, however, the rapid social and economic changes brought about by industrialisation put these systems under intolerable strain, forcing radical new solutions to be sought to address both old and new problems of health care and poor relief.This volume looks at how northern European governments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries coped with the needs of the poor, whilst balancing any new measures against the perceived negative effects of relief upon the moral wellbeing of the poor and issues of social stability.Taken together, the essays in this volume chart the varying responses of states, social classes and political theorists towards the great social and economic issue of the age, industrialisation. Its demands and effects undermined the capacity of the old poor relief arrangements to look after those people that the fits and starts of the industrialisation cycle itself turned into paupers. The result was a response that replaced the traditional principle of 'outdoor' relief, with a generally repressive system of 'indoor' relief that lasted until the rise of organised labour forced a more benign approach to the problems of poverty.Although complete in itself, this volume also forms the third of a four-volume survey of health care and poor relief provision between 1500 and 1900, edited by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vii
List of Tables	viii
List of Contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	x
Part One General Themes
Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe	3	(12)
Ole Peter Grell
Andrew Cunningham
Health Care and the Construction of Citizenship in Civil Societies in the Era of the Enlightenment and Industrialisation	15	(17)
Dorothy Porter
Histories of Risk and Welfare in Europe during the l8th and l9th Centuries	32	(37)
Marco van Leeuwen
Part Two The German States
Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in Enlightenment and l9th Century Prussia	69	(43)
Fritz Dross
Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in the Electorate and Kingdom of Bavaria	112	(24)
Michael Stolberg
Urban Charity and the Relief of the Sick Poor in Northern Germany, 1750-1850	136	(21)
Mary Lindemann
Part Three Russia and Scandinavia
Health Care and Poor Relief in Russia, 1700-1856	157	(15)
Hubertus Jahn
Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in Enlightenment and 19th Century Denmark	172	(17)
Gerda Bonderup
Ideology or Pragmatism? Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in Norway in the 19th Century	189	(14)
Øivind Larsen
Part Four Britain
Health Care and Poor Relief in Provincial England	203	(17)
Anne Crowther
Medical Relief and the New Poor Law in London	220	(26)
David Green
Poor Relief and Health Care in l9th Century Scotland	246	(13)
Rosalind Mitchison
Part Five The Netherlands
Dutch Approaches to Problems of Illness and Poverty between the Golden Age and the Fin de Siecle	259	(20)
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra
Part Six France
Poor Relief and Medical Assistance in l8th and l9th Century Paris	279	(30)
Matthew Ramsey
Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in l9th Century Provincial France	309	(16)
Olivier Faure
Index	325