"Pray Remember the Poor Debtors"

"Today one of the major social concerns in the United States is the rising cost of health care. People complain about the prices charged for a doctor's appointment and for expensive prescription medicine. It was no different in nineteenth-century England. The cost of a doctor's visit increased as the medical field became more professionalized. Many medical practitioners sought university degrees; over 8,000 university men became doctors between 1801 and 1850.Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 4-5. Some of these highly trained physicians practiced at one of the 70 new specialty hospitals that were founded during this time in England.Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 5. An extremely successful medical practice, especially one catering to the upper class, could make a physician wealthy."