Ole Peter Grell - Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe

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

The History of Medicine in Context

Series Editors: Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell

Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Cambridge

Department of History
The Open University

Titles in this series include:

'The Battle for Health': A Political History of the
Socialist Medical Association, 1930-51
John Stewart

Medicine and Charity in Georgian Bath:
A Social History of the General Infirmary, c. 1739-1830
Anne Borsay

The Nurse Apprentice, 1860-1977
Ann Bradshaw

The Return of Epidemics:
Health and Society in Peru during the Twentieth Century
Marcos Cueto

Reinventing Hippocrates
Edited by David Cantor

Edited by
Ole Peter Grell
Andrew Cunningham
and
Robert Jtte

First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Copyright Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Robert Jtte, 2002

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Health care and poor relief in 18th and 19th century
Northern Europe. (The history of medicine in context)
1. Poor Medical care Europe, Northern History 18th
century 2. Poor Medical care Europe, Northern History
19th century 3. Charities Europe, Northern History
18th century 4. Charities Europe, Northern History
19th century
I. Grell, Ole Peter II. Cunningham, Andrew III. Jtte, Robert
362.509409033

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Health care and poor relief in 18th and 19th century northern Europe / edited by Ole
Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jtte.
p. cm. (History of medicine in context)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7546-0275-3 (alk. paper)
1. Medical care Europe, Northern History 18th century. 2. Medical care
Europe, Northern History 19th century. 3. Public welfare Europe, Northern
History 18th century. 4. Public welfare Europe, Northern History 19th
century. 5. Poor Medical care Europe, Northern History. 6. Public health
Europe, Northern History. 7. Social medicine Europe, Northern History. I.
Grell, Ole Peter. II. Cunningham, Andrew, Dr. III. Jtte, Robert. IV. Series.

RA418.5.P6 H3865 2001
362.109409033 dc21

2001022822

Typeset in Times by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire, UK.

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0275-0 (hbk)

Gerda Bonderup , University of Aarhus, Denmark

Anne Crowther , University of Glasgow, Scotland

Andrew Cunningham , University of Cambridge, England

Fritz Dross , Heinrich Heine University, Dsseldorf, Germany

Olivier Faure , University of Lyons, France

Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra , University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

David Green , King's College, University of London, England

Ole Peter Grell , The Open University, England

Hubertus Jahn , Clare College, Cambridge, England

Robert Jtte , Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stuttgart, Germany

ivind Larsen , University of Oslo, Norway

Marco van Leeuwen , University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Mary Lindemann , Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

Rosalind Mitchison , University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Dorothy Porter , Birkbeck College, University of London, England

Matthew Ramsey , Vanderbilt University, USA

Michael Stolberg , Technische Universitt, Munich, Germany

This volume is built around a conference organised by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, at that time members of the now defunct Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, in collaboration with Robert Jtte, director of the Robert Bosch Stiftung of Stuttgart, and held at the Stiftung in Stuttgart in June 1998. We are grateful to the Robert Bosch Stiftung for hosting the conference. For financial support of the conference we thank the Wellcome Trust and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

The editors would especially like to thank Linda Cayford for her sensitive and skilful copy-editing of a challenging set of chapters.

Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham

According to Christ, the poor are always with us (Matthew 26: 11). This had been the case in 16th and 17th century Europe and it certainly remained so in the two centuries we are concerned with in this volume. How did the European governments and states cope with the needs of the poorer parts of their populations, during the Enlightenment and industrialisation? What role did such arrangements for the poor play with respect to maintaining social stability and furthering the interests of the ruling classes? How did provision for the maintenance and health of the poor change under rapidly changing economic circumstances? How did the different states of Europe and their people differ in their attitudes to, and provision for, the poor?

This volume offers some answers to these questions by presenting the basis for a comparative view of health care provision and poor relief in northern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although complete in itself, the volume is also the third of a four-volume survey of health care and poor relief provision in early modern Europe, 1500-1900. In the first two volumes of this series we were particularly concerned with the important role played by the religious impulse in making and shaping provision for the poor in the two centuries after the Reformation. It is clear that, for the most part, the health care provision and poor relief in the north and south of Europe developed along different routes during and after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The northern, Protestant, countries came to be characterised by schemes predominantly initiated by local and central governments, while the southern, Catholic, parts of Europe in particular witnessed a reinvigoration of confessional institutions and the creation of new lay and clerical orders dedicated to the poor and the sick.

These two different lines of development continued into the 18th and 19th centuries, although not so directly linked with confessional differences. While in the 15th and early 16th centuries the dynamism of trade and industry had been most evident in the south of Europe, especially in the Italian city states, this state of affairs had begun to change in the course of the 16th century and, as a result, it was the states of northern Europe which by the 17th century, began to lead the way in trade, industry and wealth creation. The Netherlands and Britain were the first to reform their agricultural systems and expand their trade and, in Britain's case, to industrialise. In the course of the 19th century their dominant roles came to be challenged by other northern states, especially Germany and France, as they too underwent agricultural, industrial and trading revolutions. The traditional institutions and arrangements for the care of the sick and poor were themselves put under stress by these developments, especially in the countries where the populations were rapidly expanding. New solutions were needed for both old and new problems.