Dr Alistair Ritch MB, ChB, FRCP(Lond), FRCP(Edin). MPhil(B), PhD

Dr Alistair Ritch

Department of Applied Health Sciences
Honorary Research Fellow

Contact details

Email
a.e.ritch@bham.ac.uk
Address
Person-Centred Research
Department of Applied Health Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Alistair Ritch is a former Consultant Physician in Geriatric Medicine at City Hospital, Birmingham, Senior Clinical Lecturer at University of Birmingham and Honorary Secretary of the British Geriatrics Society.

Biography

Dr Alistair Ritch is a former Consultant Physician in Geriatric Medicine at City Hospital, Birmingham, Senior Clinical Lecturer at University of Birmingham and Honorary Secretary of the British Geriatrics Society. 

He completed his MPhil(B) on ‘Sick, Aged and Infirm’ Adults in the new Birmingham Workhouse, 1852-1912 in 2010 and his PhD on Medical Care in the Workhouses in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, 1834-1914 in 2015, both at the University of Birmingham.

Research

His current research interests include nineteenth and early twentieth-century institutional medical care and treatment, poor law medical services and the history of ageing and the specialty of geriatric medicine.

Research Centres and groups

Person-Centred Research

Publications

Selected Publications

Alistair Ritch, ‘Workhouse or asylum? Accommodating pauper lunatics in nineteenth-century England’, Medical History, 2023; 67: 109-127.

Alistair Ritch, ‘‘Twas Ever Thus: How the Public Health Measures to Combat COVID-19 Are Rooted in the Past’, European Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2022; 10: 69-75.

Alistair Ritch, ‘The birth of geriatric medicine and its struggle for survival as a medical specialty’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2021; 5: 184-91.

Alistair Ritch, Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834-1914, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, 2019

Alistair Ritch, ‘New Poor Law Medical Care in the Local Health Economy’, Local Population Studies, 2017; 99:42-55.

Alistair Ritch, ‘English Poor Law Institutional Care for Older People: Identifying the ‘Aged and Infirm’ and the ‘Sick’ in Birmingham Workhouse, 1852-`1912, Social History of Medicine, 2014; 27: 64-85

Jonathan Reinarz, Alistair Ritch, ‘Exploring Medical Care in the Nineteenth-Century Provincial Workhouse: A View from Birmingham’ in Medicine and the Workhouse, eds, Jonathan Reinarz, Leonard Schwarz, University of Rochester Press: Rochester, 2013.

A Ritch, ‘History of Geriatric Medicine: from Hippocrates to Marjory Warren’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2012; 42: 368-74.

K M Sharobeem, J V Patel, A E S Ritch, G Y H Lip, S Gill, E A Hughes, ‘Elevated lipoprotein (a) and apolipoprotein B to AI ratio in South Asian patients with ischaemic stroke’, International Journal of Clinical Practice, 2007; 61, 11: 1824-28.

P K Sarkar, A E S Ritch, ‘Management of Urinary Incontinence’, Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 2000; 25: 251-63.

Alistair Ritch, ‘Older People in Ethnic Minority Groups’, in Community Care of Older People, eds, David Beales, Michael Denham, Alistair Tulloch, Radcliffe Medical Press: Oxford, 1998

A E S Ritch, M Ehtisham, S Guthrie, J M Talbot, M Luck, R N Tinsley, ‘Ethnic Influence on Health and Dependency of Elderly Inner City Residents’, Journal of Royal College of Physicians of London, 1996; 30: 215-20.