The transformation of German academic medicine 1750–1820

Yet these have made little difference to patient care, or to the lives of the workers, and have not solved the difficulties brought about by the tripartite structure. All that has been gained (including by Thatcher's use of the Maoist ideology of perpetual revolution) is an increase in the proportion of funds spent on administration: once an internationally lean figure of 5 per cent, this is now 12 per cent and, Webster reports, possibly set to rise to 17 per cent. And under a Conservative government committed to rolling back the power of the state and abolishing quangos there was the paradox of even more central control. Quite what the future holds is not a matter for the historian, but it is ironic that currently Mr Dobson seems to be going back to the thinking of 1944 for deciding on the number of statutory health authorities, when the favoured figure was forty for a single tier. Given that the Ring opens with the Rhinemaidens worshipping the Rhinegold and ends with their celebrating their newly restored treasure, perhaps any comparison between Webster and Wagner is not all that far-fetched.