BBC Timeshift - Health before the NHS (2012)

Robert Winston narrates the shocking story of health in Britain before the National Health Service.

Part 2: A Medical Revolution At the beginning of the 20th century hospitals were forbidding places very much to be avoided - a last resort for the destitute rather than places you would go to get better. Using unique archive footage from an era when infectious disease was virtually untreatable and powerful first-hand accounts from patients, doctors and nurses, the programme explores the extraordinary transformation of the hospital from Victorian workhouse to modern centre of medicine.

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