The State, the People and the Care of Sick and Injured Sailors in Late Stuart England

This article sheds new light on the depth and breadth of the Royal Navy's partnership with private care providers in one English town, Portsmouth, during the second Anglo-Dutch war (1664–67), by paying special attention to the role of landladies. We also re-examine why naval health care in England was transformed from a system based on numerous town quarters to one reliant upon a handful of private contract hospitals. A key factor in the change was naval medical officials' unwillingness to partner with landladies, because the officials identified landladies with the main failings of the town quartering system. Dishonest landladies, it was argued, promoted disorders among sick and injured seamen to the detriment of the navy. Naval health care in England was centralised at the beginning of the eighteenth century, therefore, for both medical-instrumental and moral reasons.
Source: Social History of Medicine - Category: History of Medicine Authors: Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research