William Beveridge
Important in Medicine because…
Early in his career he advised Lloyd George and assisted in the introduction of the Liberal advances of Pensions, Free School meals and school milk and school nurses.
He produced the 1942 Report which detailed the five ‘Giant Evils’: want, disease, idleness, squalor and ignorance. His findings set the foundations of the modern welfare state, in particular he advised the setting up the NHS. This included free medical treatments for all, and a benefits or welfare system that provided and protected everyone. Bevan would take up his ideas and implement them from 1946, finally opening the NHS in 1948.