Book Review: Health, Civilization And The State

One major book that I have been using that has contributed to my understanding of Britain’s healthcare system and social healthcare in general is Health, Civilization and the State. Its written by Dorothy Porter and was published in 1999; the book is a comprehensive review of the development of healthcare throughout the worlds history and it does a great job of reciting the developments of the healthcare systems throughout the years. Dorothy Porter starts with the development of health systems in the ancient world and talks about how health was generally viewed in ancient society. The book also deals with states generalizations of health and what factors they felt constituted a healthy human being. It’s interesting to see how these concepts have changed over years as we have gained more knowledge of the human body.

Porter continues her discussion about health by bringing it into the modern state area and closely examines the development of healthcare within Europe. She focuses mainly of the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, and Germany. She reserves a special chapter for the development of healthcare in the United States which she relegates to chapter 9 of the text. Dorothy Porter spends at least 3 three non-sequential chapters dealing with healthcare in Britain since it’s development was different than other modern states. She devotes one chapter alone to Victorian Era England and the “Sanitary Debates” which brought the issue of public sanitation to the forefront of British politics. She also spends a chapter dealing with healthcare in the modern welfare state which is helpful to my paper and the formulation of some of my ideas and arguments.

A criticism I have with the book is that it’s focus deals mainly with Western countries, I would have liked to see her analyze the healthcare systems of Asia or Africa or even South America. Also there is a lot of information in the book but not all of it is relevant; however this is a small gripe since even the information that I felt was irrelevant was still interesting.

I would definitely recommend Health, Civilization and the State to anyone who is interested in learning more about the development of healthcare throughout the ages. It has great information, and it’s a very interesting read for anyone who is interested.

Porter, Dorothy. Health, Civilization and the State. London: Routlegde, 1999. Print.