Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• describe the wide range of methods of promoting health, preventing disease and providing care that were available to patients of different social groups and classes

• demonstrate an awareness of the inequalities of services – in terms of both quality of care and access to different services – open to different social groups and classes

• assess the significance of the roles of central and local governments, the private sector and voluntary associations in providing medical services

• understand the concept of ‘medicalisation’ and assess the degree of power doctors had over people's lives in the early twentieth century.