This ambitious book presents an across-the-board study of medicine, in any urban centre, for any period of British history. By selecting Wakefield and Huddersfield as contrasting types of northern towns, and examining in details their systems of medical care, Dr Marland has written a local history that says something important about the country as a whole. Wakefield and Huddersfield contrasted in their economic demographic and social development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, allowing an effective comparative analysis of medical facilities in the two communities. By drawing on diverse sources: from Poor Law and philanthropy to self-help organisations, fringe medicine and medical practice, the book places the development of medical services against the backdrop of the communities in which they evolved, their class structure, organization and social, civic and economic developments.

This book analyses the sources of finance used in the Yorkshire wool textile sector during a period of rapid expansion, considerable technical change and the gradual transformation from domestic and workshop production to factory industry. Although there has been much recent debate about capital investment proportions and their sources nationally, there is no other study of a region or section capable of testing various hypotheses current in the general literature of the British 'industrial revolution'. How was capital amassed in proto-industry? How important were merchants in building factories? What role did landowners and the local banking sector? What influence did trade credit and fluctuations in trade credit have on the expansion of productive enterprise? How important was reinvestment and what determined both profitability and the extent to which it was ploughed back into business? The answers to these questions have value for all students of the industrialisation process, whilst the detailed material on Yorkshire is of interest for local study and provides a model of the questions which could be asked in other similar regional studies of the future.

This book traces the diffusion trajectory of the second and third generation of British steam engines, the Watt and high-pressure models, covering the period 1774 to 1870. It begins by subjecting to econometric analysis the latest version of Dr. Kanefsky's database on 18th century steam engines coming up with an upward revision of the total amount of horsepower installed by 1800. Subsequent chapters delve into the determinants of the diffusion process through the third quarter of the 19th century relating to engines used both in mining and industry as well as transportation (railways, steam cars). The book's main contribution to the literature lies in drawing material from a very large volume of 18th- and 19th-century sources found in the Dibner Library of Rare Books, Smithsonian, and by utilizing a fair amount of technical literature pertaining to the economic factors driving the diffusion process. This great expansion of the empirical material has led to bringing multiple revisions to the work of other authors on the key aspects and determinants of the diffusion process. In conjunction with the publication by the author of an earlier monograph on the first generation of steam engines, the Newcomen model, the present study completes the task of offering the most comprehensive account of the preeminent and most strategic technology of the British Industrial Revolution. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of economic history and history of technology, interested in a better understanding of the industrial revolution in general and the role of British steam engines in particular.

Healing with water provides a medical and social history of English spas and hydropathic centres from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. It argues that demand for healing rather than leisure drove the growth of a number of inland resorts which became renowned for expertise and treatment facilities. These aspects were actively marketed to doctors and patients. It assesses the influence of these centres on broader patterns of resort development, leisure and sociability in Britain. The study explores ideas about water’s healing potential and the varied ways it was used to maintain good health and treat a variety of illnesses. Water cures were endorsed by both orthodox and unorthodox practitioners and attracted growing numbers of patients into the twentieth century. It examines how institutions and skilled workers shaped the development of specialist resorts and considers why the NHS support for spa treatment declined from the 1960s.