Pilar Leon Sanz (ed.). Health Institutions at the Origins of the Welfare Systems in Europe, Pamplona: EUNSA, 2010. Pp. 197. european dollow12.50. ISBN 978 84 313 2673 9.

摘要

Producing a coherent and worthwhile edited collection from a conference or workshop is always a difficult task, doing so in a language other than your native tongue must be even more so. This was the challenge which Pilar Leon Sanz set for this small selection of essays addressing elements of medical change in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. Based on a Phoenix TX working group, 'Welfare, Health and NGOs', the six essays are largely by Spanish researchers and focus on Spanish themes with one rather anomalous piece on mental health provision in Poland. The title's focus on health institutions broadly defined allows the collection to push out from its original base in the history of NGOs to look at the ideas underpinning service provision in Spain and the interaction between public, private and voluntary in the creation of those services. These are important issues in the history of the institutional development of health care in this transitional era between elite charity and state support and it is particularly encouraging to see these issues examined outside the Anglo-American world and the findings made available in English. That said, this collection does not live up to the promise of the title and the results are patchy or even poor.