The early history of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: A socio-historical study of lay/practitioner interaction in the context of a medical charity

In the twentieth century single-disease charities have become an established feature of the social organization of biomedicine, providing support and welfare for sufferers and raising funds for research. Such charities are an important interface between the medical profession and the interested laity. They therefore constitute a subject area that ought to reward the attention of the historian or sociologist of medicine. The present paper approaches the issue of lay/professional interaction within recent biomedicine through an investigation of the early history of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.2 We explore episodes in the development of the Society from its foundation in 1953 to the retirement of its founder-chairman in 1976.