Replacing Hips and Lenses: Surgery, Industry and Innovation in Post-War Britain

This chapter brings together two case studies of medical innovations, and two authors from different disciplinary backgrounds, albeit from the same University. The innovations in question have proved hugely important in improving the quality of life for increasingly elderly populations. They have many similarities and interesting differences, and that balance provides a good opportunity for comparative analysis, drawing here on the approaches to medical innovation which are characteristic of economists interested in innovation (see Metcalfe, 1998) and of historians focused on modern medicine and its technologies (see Pickstone, 1992; 2000a).