 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(December 2018) |
A public dispensary, charitable dispensary or free dispensary gives advice and medicines free-of-charge, or for a small charge. [1]
| | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(December 2018) |
A public dispensary, charitable dispensary or free dispensary gives advice and medicines free-of-charge, or for a small charge. [1]
In the 19th and early 20th centuries a provident dispensary was a clinic offering medical care to people who made a small weekly payment as a kind of medical insurance.
In England, from the later 18th Century onwards, there was a growth in Medical Philanthropy. This saw the establishment of voluntary hospitals offering in-patient and dispensaries offering out-patient treatment. By 1800 dispensaries dealt with at least 10,000 admissions per year. [2]
There are competing claims to where the first dispensary was founded but it is clear that dispensaries began being established in numbers from 1770 onwards. [3] The Philadelphia Dispensary for the Medical Relief of the Poor, founded in 1786, is considered to be the first public dispensary in the United States. [4]
According to a historian of health services "During the nineteenth century access to healthcare was class based". [5]
Dispensaries were funded by voluntary subscriptions. Subscribers would "recommend" local people to be treated by the dispensary. [6] In the main the medical practitioners engaged by dispensaries offered their services for free. [7]
One of the earlier English cities to have a provident dispensary was Coventry (dispensary opened in 1830) where, in the 1840s, members subscribed one penny a week for adults and a halfpenny a week for each of their children. This was seen as a suitable arrangement for working-class people who wanted to be provident and self-reliant, avoiding charitable treatment offered to 'paupers', but with no hope of paying the fees charged to wealthier people. A provident dispensary needed a few hundred 'club' members to pay for one doctor. Some dispensaries had extra funding from philanthropists, and some arranged for hospital specialists to see dispensary patients at reduced fees. Doctors at a few provident dispensaries, in London for example, would visit patients at home.
A provident dispensary was opened in Buffalo, New York in the second half of the 19th century.
In some places the same need might be met by friendly societies organised by the members themselves. Provident dispensaries, on the other hand, were usually set up by prosperous well-wishers and/or by a doctor, as Sophia Jex-Blake did in Edinburgh, with support from a committee.
A plague doctor was a physician who treated victims of bubonic plague during epidemics mainly in the 16th and 17th century. These physicians were hired by cities to treat infected patients regardless of income, especially the poor that could not afford to pay.
A children's hospital is a hospital that offers its services exclusively to infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In certain special cases, they may also treat adults. The number of children's hospitals proliferated in the 20th century, as pediatric medical and surgical specialties separated from internal medicine and adult surgical specialties.
Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) is a large NHS teaching hospital in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, England. Founded by Charles White in 1752 as part of the voluntary hospital movement of the 18th century, it is now a major regional and national medical centre. It is the largest Hospital within Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, and based on its Oxford Road Campus in South Manchester where it shares a site with the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Manchester Royal Eye Hospital and Saint Mary's Hospital as well as several other educational and research facilities. The Hospital is also a key site for medical educational within Manchester, serving as a main teaching hospital for School of Medical Sciences, University of Manchester.
The Public Dispensary of Edinburgh was the first free-of-charge hospital in Scotland.
The Ancoats Hospital and Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary was a large inner-city hospital located in Ancoats, to the north of the city centre of Manchester, England. It was built in 1875, replacing the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary that had existed since 1828. The building is now Grade II listed.
A public hospital, or government hospital, is a hospital which is government owned and is fully funded by the government and operates solely off the money that is collected from taxpayers to fund healthcare initiatives. In some countries, this type of hospital provides medical care free of charge to patients, covering expenses and wages by government reimbursement.
Mary Edith Pechey was one of the first women doctors in the United Kingdom and a campaigner for women's rights. She spent more than 20 years in India as a senior doctor at a women's hospital and was involved in a range of social causes.
A cottage hospital is a semi-obsolete type of small hospital, most commonly found in the United Kingdom.
A dispensary is an office in a school, hospital, industrial plant, or other organization that dispenses medications, medical supplies, and in some cases even medical and dental treatment. In a traditional dispensary set-up, a pharmacist dispenses medication per the prescription or order form. The English term originated from the medieval Latin noun dispensaria and is cognate with the Latin verb dispensare, 'to distribute'.
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with many beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' (geriatric) hospitals, and hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received.
Henry Lilley Smith was born in Southam, Warwickshire, England in 1787 or 1788. He became assistant surgeon to the 45th Regiment and obtained a diploma of MRCS in 1810 and then practised at Southam, where he was appointed parish surgeon. In April 1818 he opened a small hospital for the treatment of diseases of the eye and ear. It was built on land adjoining his house and contained about fourteen beds and was supported by voluntary subscriptions and donations. Smith periodically visited Warwick, Rugby, Banbury, and Northampton to select suitable cases. About 100 in-patients and 250 out-patients were treated annually. In-patients received free professional attendance, medicine and lodging, but had to pay for their food, the charge for which was 10d a day for a man, 8d for a woman and 6d for a child. During the first forty years of the 'Eye and Ear Infirmary' 12,220 patients were treated and two-thirds were discharged cured.
The history of hospitals began in antiquity with hospitals in Greece, the Roman Empire and on the Indian subcontinent as well, starting with precursors in the Asclepian temples in ancient Greece and then the military hospitals in ancient Rome. The Greek temples were dedicated to the sick and infirm but did not look anything like modern hospitals. The Romans did not have dedicated, public hospitals. Public hospitals, per se, did not exist until the Christian period. Towards the end of the 4th century, the "second medical revolution" took place with the founding of the first Christian hospital in the eastern Byzantine Empire by Basil of Caesarea, and within a few decades, such hospitals had become ubiquitous in Byzantine society. The hospital would undergo development and progress throughout Byzantine, medieval European and Islamic societies from the 5th to the 15th century. European exploration brought hospitals to colonies in North America, Africa, and Asia. Early Chinese and Japanese hospitals were established by Western missionaries in the 1800s. In the early modern era care and healing would transition into a secular affair in the West for many hospitals. During World War I and World War II, many military hospitals and hospital innovations were created. Government run hospitals increased in Korea, Japan, China, and the Middle East after World War II. In the late 1900s and 21st century, hospital networks and government health organizations were formed to manage groups of hospitals to control costs and share resources. Many smaller, less efficient hospitals in the West were closed because they could not be sustained.
Leith Hospital was situated on Mill Lane in Leith, Edinburgh, and was a general hospital with adult medical and surgical wards, paediatric medical and surgical wards, a casualty department and a wide range of out-patient services. It closed in 1987.
The Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls was an innovative American health care service at the turn of the twentieth century. As a public dispensary, it provided "outpatient medical treatment and advice to patients, in contrast to the inpatient service provided by hospitals". It offered medical treatment for poor women, educated the public on health matters, and provided female medical students with an opportunity to learn and gain experience.
Alexandrina Matilda MacPhail, OBE was a Scottish doctor who graduated from the London School of Medicine for Women. In 1887, she became a missionary and doctor in India, where she founded what would become a large hospital in Madras. During the First World War, she also worked for the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service as a doctor in Serbia and France.
Rose v Royal College of Physicians, also known as The Rose Case, was a 1703 British landmark court case between the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and William Rose, a Liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries. Rose had treated a John Seale, who complained about his treatment to the RCP, who brought a successful court action against Rose in 1703. The Society of Apothecaries and Rose successfully appealed against this judgement. However, this did not change medical practice but merely legitimised what apothecaries were doing already and confirmed the "status quo". It did, nevertheless, symbolize the decline in the College's growing legal monopoly over who practises medicine. The case was ultimately seen as not one between a College and one individual, but one between one powerful College against one powerful Society.
John Clark M.D. (1744–1805) was a Scottish physician, known also as a medical philanthropist in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Extramural medical education in Edinburgh began over 200 years before the university medical faculty was founded in 1726 and extramural teaching continued thereafter for a further 200 years. Extramural is academic education which is conducted outside a university. In the early 16th century it was under the auspices of the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and continued after the Faculty of Medicine was established by the University of Edinburgh in 1726. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries the demand for extramural medical teaching increased as Edinburgh's reputation as a centre for medical education grew. Instruction was carried out by individual teachers, by groups of teachers and, by the end of the 19th century, by private medical schools in the city. Together these comprised the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. From 1896 many of the schools were incorporated into the Medical School of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh under the aegis of the RCSEd and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and based at Surgeons' Hall. Extramural undergraduate medical education in Edinburgh stopped in 1948 with the closure of the Royal Colleges' Medical School following the Goodenough Report which recommended that all undergraduate medical education in the UK should be carried out by universities.
Christopher Johnson (1782-1866) of Lancaster, UK was a surgeon and was appointed Mayor of Lancaster in 1832.
