This text takes a step in pointing new directions for sociological and social-historical studies of health and health care. Throughout the book, the division of labour in health care, especially as it relates to social class and gender divisions, is taken as central.

List of figures; Preface; Acknowledgements Introduction: Some theoretical and methodological thoughts Part I Health and Healing in Other Societies The Plurality of Healing Systems in Tudor and Stuart England Eighteenth-Century Foundations for the Development of Biomedicine Hospitals and Public Health: Control, Exploitation and the Development of Medical Knowledge Organizing the Division of Labour in Health Care Laying the Basis for the National Health Service The State and the Division of Health Labour: the National Health Service Part II Introduction and Biological Base Concepts of Health and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (1): Lay Concepts of Health and Illness Concepts of Health and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (2): Alternative Healing Systems Concepts of Healing and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (3): Biomedicine and Beyond Social Organization of Health Care and the Division of Paid Health Labour Unpaid Workers in the Division of Health Labour (1): the Patients Unpaid Workers in the Division of Health Labour (2): the Unpaid Carers Health Care and Late Twentieth-Century Capitalism Reproduction for the Twenty-First Century References and Bibliography Index