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

Download or read book Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe written by Ole Peter Grell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at how northern European governments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries coped with the needs of the poor, whilst balancing any new measures against the perceived negative effects of relief upon the moral wellbeing of the poor and issues of social stability. Taken together, the essays in this volume chart the varying responses of states, social classes and political theorists towards the great social and economic issue of the age, industrialisation. Its demands and effects undermined the capacity of the old poor relief arrangements to look after those people that the fits and starts of the industrialisation cycle itself turned into paupers. The result was a response that replaced the traditional principle of 'outdoor' relief, with a generally repressive system of 'indoor' relief that lasted until the rise of organised labour forced a more benign approach to the problems of poverty.