Paul Rossi, Fighting Cancer with More Than Medicine: A History of Macmillan Cancer Support

Extract

This survey of the first hundred years of the charity now known as Macmillan Cancer Support (hereafter Macmillan) is not aimed at historians. Decades of developments in cancer biology and treatment are glossed in a page, mini-biographies of key players are invariably extremely positive, and there are very few footnotes. It is a book written primarily for those who have given their time, labour and money to the charity, serving as a memorial to its founders and leaders and a record of its growth and its changing priorities.

Rossi's account, however, does shed valuable light on three of the key issues faced by the voluntary sector in modern health care systems: relations between different charitable organisations (not often harmonious); the need to develop and preserve clear branding in the face of the competition for donors; and the interface between charitable provision of services and the National Health Service (NHS). As such, it would make a useful source for comparative figures and case studies for any scholar interested in the history of medical charities or the differing models for the provision of health care.