The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7385 p111
28 January 2006

Entertaining history for a general audience but not for the serious historian

‘A history of Britain’s hospitals and the background to the medical, nursing and allied professions’, by G. Barry Carruthers and Lesley A. Carruthers. Pp x+430. Price £18.50. East Sussex: Book Guild Publishing; 2005. ISBN 1 85776 905 8

This book presents a personal and eclectic survey of the history of hospitals in Britain. It contains 14 chapters of varying length. These trace the history of hospitals from Roman times to the present day. Separate chapters describe the development of specialist, cottage, maternity, children’s and psychiatric hospitals. Others explore the evolution of the medical and nursing professions, the independent sector and the background of the National Health Service.

The book is lavishly illustrated. It contains over 200 paintings, cartoons and photographs. These are mainly of hospitals, but others illustrate wider aspects of the history of medicine. Many have not been widely seen before. The text is not referenced, although a bibliography lists nearly 100 books used as source material. Pharmacists will be disappointed to find almost no reference to their profession. The occasional reference to apothecaries is spoiled by irritating errors; the “Society of Apothecaries” is described as the “Apothecaries Company”, and “physick garden” appears as “physics garden”.

The book is aimed at a general audience, although there is no preface indicating its purpose. For those unfamiliar with the history of hospitals it offers an informative and entertaining read. The serious historian will need to refer to the books from which the material is drawn and the primary sources used to compile them.


Stuart Anderson (senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and immediate past president of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy)