Text of Keynote Address to Third Conference of
the International Health Economics Association
on ‘The Economics of Health: Within and Beyond
Health Care,’ York, 23 July 2001.
‘The world ... is not an inn, but a hospital,’ said
Sir Thomas Browne more than three and half
centuries ago, in 1643. That is a discouraging, if
not entirely surprising, interpretation of the world
from the distinguished author of Religio Medici
and Pseudodoxia Epidemica. But Browne may not
be entirely wrong: even today (not just in Browne’s
17th century England), illness of one kind or
another is an important presence in the lives of a
great many people. Indeed, Browne may have been
somewhat optimistic in his invoking of a hospital:
many of the people who are most ill in the world
today get no treatment for their ailments, nor the
use of effective means of prevention.