Hospitals, Health Centres and History

3.3.06

Pre 19th Century
• Hospitals marginal to medical care.
• "Gateways to death."
• Limited range of patients.
• Very few hospitals.

19th Century developments
• Increase in number of hospitals.
• Linked to population and urban growth.
• Still don't treat the rich.
• Primarily social institutions - respectable working classes.

Types of hospitals
1. Workhouse infirmaries.
2. Voluntary hospitals.
3. Specialist hospitals.
4. Cottage hospitals.

Revolution in hospital care
• 1830s - crises over "hospital diseases."
• 1840s - anaesthesia - safer operations.
• 1867 - Lister publishes on antisepsis.
• 1880s - most hospitals had asepsis/antisepsis regimes.

Late 19th Century
• Sophistication of medical testing.
• Impact of germ theory of disease.
• New bacteriological laboratories.
• Rich people forced to hospitals.
• Wilhelm Roentgen (1845-1923) - x-rays.
• Willem Einthoven (1860-1927) - ECG.
• Charles Sherrington(1857-1927) - nervous system.