Healthcare in Ireland and Britain from 1850

Book excerpt: Introduction / Donnacha Seán Lucey, Virginia Crossman -- I. Historiographical directions: 'Voluntarism' in English health and welfare : visions of history / Martin Gorsky. Healthcare systems in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries : the national, international and sub-national contexts / John Stewart -- II. Voluntary hospital provision: Paying for health : comparative perspectives on patient payment and contributions for hospital provision in Ireland / Donnacha Seán Lucey, George Campbell Gosling. 'Why have a Catholic hospital at all?' : the Mater Infirmorum Hospital Belfast and the state, 1883-1972 / Peter Martin. Cottage hospitals and communities in rural East Devon, 1919-1939 / Julia Neville -- III. Healthcare and the mixed economy: The mixed economy of care in the South Wales coalfield, c.1850-1950 / Steven Thompson. ' ... it would be preposterous to bring a Protestant here' : religion, provincial politics and district nurses in Ireland, 1890-1904 / Ciara Breathnach. To 'solve the darkest social problems of our time' : the Church of Scotland's entry into the British matrix of health and welfare provision c.1880-1914 / Janet Greenlees -- IV. Public health, voluntarism and local government: Feverish activity : Dublin City Council and the smallpox outbreak of 1902-3 / Ciarán Wallace. Influenza : the Irish Local Government Board's last great crisis / Ida Milne. The roots of regionalism : municipal medicine from the Local Government Board to the Dawson report / Sally Sheard.