BEFORE THE NHS

The existence of a universal health service in Britain that is free at the point of use, available to all, and provides high-quality healthcare is generally taken for granted. It therefore requires some effort on the part of most of us to imagine what life was like before it.

The National Health Service (NHS) came into existence on 5 July 1948. At midnight, the ways in which health services were administered, organised and funded changed significantly, although the extent to which our forebears’ experiences were transformed is far more complex and varied enormously from person to person.

Before 1948, our ancestors got their healthcare from many different organisations in many different ways. The result was a ramshackle structure of competing and overlapping services that was nevertheless characterised by gaps in provision. These meant real hardship for a significant proportion of the British public.

FIRST PORT OF CALL

So when