Lavinia Mitton is a lecturer in social policy at the University of Kent. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford, where she studied at Somerville College. She obtained an MSc at Wolfson College, Oxford, and specialised in the social history of medicine. She has worked as a researcher at the University of Cambridge, where she also tutored students in economic history. She authored this book while writing a doctoral thesis on the history of social policy at the London School of Economics.

Lavinia Mitton follows the changes in hospital treatment that took place during the Victorian era and explores the different types of hospitals that were available, from the celebrated specialist institutions served by famous surgeons to the appalling workhouse infirmaries where the patients were looked after by untrained pauper nurses. Illustrated with black and white drawings and photographs of the buildings, beds, waiting rooms and even ambulances that served the Victorian people, this book is a fascinating insight into the growth of hospitals and medical education, and the advances in surgery and nursing that closed the gap between the 1830s hospital and the establishments that we are familiar with today.