Full Description
By chronicling the transformations of hospitals from houses of mercy to tools for confinement, from dwellings of rehabilitation to spaces for clinical teaching and research, from rooms for birthing and dying to institutions of science and technology, this book provides a historical approach to understanding of today's hospitals. The story is told in a dozen episodes which illustrate hospitals in particular times and places, covering important themes and developments in the history of medicine and therapeutics, from ancient Greece to the era of AIDS. This book furnishes a unique insight into the world of meanings and emotions associated with hospital life and patienthood by including narratives by both patients and care givers. By conceiving of hospitals as houses of order capable of taming the chaos associated with suffering, illness, and death, we can better understand the significance of their ritualized routines and rules. From their beginnings, hospitals were places of spiritual and physical recovery. They should continue to respond to all human needs. As traditional testimonials to human empathy and benevolence, hospitals must endure as spaces of healing.
Contents
INTRODUCTION ; 1. Pre-Christian Healing Places ; 2. Early Christian Hospitality: Shelters and Infirmaries ; 3. Church and Laity: Partnership in Hospital Care ; 4. Hospitals as Segregation and Confinement Tools: Leprosy and Plague ; 5. Enlightenment: Medicalization of the Hospital ; 6. Human Bodies Revealed: Hospitals in Post-Revolutionary Paris ; 7. Modern Surgery in Hospitals: Development of Anesthesia and Antisepsis ; 8. The Limits of Medical Science: Hospitals in Fin de Siecle Europe and America ; 9. Main Streets Civic Pride: The American General Hospital as Professional Workshop ; 10. Hospitals at the Crossroads: Government, Society, and Catholicism in America, 1950-1975 ; 11. Hospitals as Biomedical Showcases: Academic Health Centers and Organ Transplantation ; 12. Caring for the Incurable: AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital ; 13. Conclusion: Towards the Next Millennium: Hospitals as Houses of Technology
