Barbers, Doctors and Healers: Community Welfare and the Health System in the North-West of Spain – The Province of Leon – During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

ublic health systems, in the strict sense, from a present-day perspective and within the framework of European industrial societies, are a matter that relates to recent history or times not long since. This is when progress and the welfare state affecting the whole of society seem to triumph, in terms both of their progressive implantation and development, and of the structures upon which these are founded. However, they have a historical backcloth and supporting bases that in some sense may shape their present and future development. Hence, an awareness of their background and in particular of their underlying structures may aid both historical knowledge and planning for the future in times of major changes in demographic patterns, with a type of technological and scientific development which is far from that enjoyed by current European societies. P