Addressing the interface between medical history and the study of contemporary issues in medicine and health, this book pays particular attention to the conduct of clinical research, the relativity of medical knowledge, and the relationship between patients and practitioners. The contested boundaries between the public and the private are a defining feature of modernity and an important focus for postmodernist accounts of power and identity. The relationship between the state, scientific knowledge, and professional expertise is explored, and its implications for the producers and consumers of healthcare are discussed in terms of class and citizenship, family, gender and community, and the urban and rural contrasts within Welsh national identity.