Since 1860, life expectancies and standards of general health have improved dramatically in industrialised societies. In the 1860s, there was little that medicine could do to cure or prevent illness, death rates were high and life expectancy short. Health and Medicine in Britain since 1860 sets out to examine the relationship between health and medicine and how it has changed in Britain in the past 150 years. From the placebo effect to Viagra, through changes in society and in the organisation, practice and expertise of medicine, this volume reviews the processes through which modern expectations of health have become established.