Public dispensary

[4] According to a historian of health services "During the nineteenth century access to healthcare was class based".

[6] In the main the medical practitioners engaged by dispensaries offered their services for free.

Doctors at a few provident dispensaries, in London for example, would visit patients at home.

A provident dispensary was opened in Buffalo, New York in the second half of the 19th century.

Provident dispensaries, on the other hand, were usually set up by prosperous well-wishers and/or by a doctor, as Sophia Jex-Blake did in Edinburgh, with support from a committee.