In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth CenturyAmerican hospitals are unique: a combination of public and private institutions that are at once charities and businesses, social welfare institutions and icons of U. S. science, wealth, and technical achievement. In Sickness and in Wealth helps us understand this huge and often contradictory industry and shows that throughout this century the voluntary not for profit hospitals have been profit maximizing enterprises, even though they have viewed