Health Care

Medicine bottles
Pills in 2002

In 1891 organised health care was still in its infancy - the setting up of the new cottage hospital in Llandrindod Wells and the town's first resident doctor Dr Bowen Davies, compared to the huge organisation that is the National Health Service today. Our pages show the reasons patients were admitted to the hospital in 1891, and what life was like for them once admitted. We look at the case of one little boy, Robert Morris, admitted to hospital following an accident. We also look at the ailments suffered by some of our contemporary diarists, and the work of nurses, dentists and other professionals in medicine Victorian and modern.

Many of the concerns that people had in 1891 were not very different from those of today. Just as Victorians were concerned for their health and came to the spas in large numbers to take health giving walks and take the waters, so are modern Powys residents concerned to prevent ill-health; consider the diary from a school nurse describing her efforts to educate children to live healthily from infancy.

And what of medicines - the patent cures and home remedies of 1891 and the medication taken today? And how the rise in popularity of complementary medicine perhaps harkens back again to the popularity of the Victorian Spa?

1891

2002