Medicine and Magnificence
Subtitle: British Hospital and Asylum Architecture, 1660-1815
Publisher: Paul Mellon Center BA
Published: February 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780300085365
Subjects: Architectural structure & design; Health systems & services; History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800; Public buildings: civic, commercial, industrial, etc; c 1600 to c 1700; c 1700 to c 1800; Hospital Administration; Public Buildings Architecture; Architecture; United Kingdom, Great Britain; International Architecture - British; Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings; Architecture / Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings; History - General; Asylums; Design and construction; Great Britain; History; Hospital architecture; Hospitals
Description: "An architectural historian, Christine Stevenson looks beyond the intrinsic value of hospital design to consider what the buildings meant to architects, builders, donors, physicians and the public, and how these meanings and functions changed. Blending social history with the details of construction, she explores views of the appropriateness of architectural display in buildings for paupers and invalids, the importance of the circulation of air for the prevention of cross-infection, the preoccupation with segregation by sex, class and diagnosis, and the provision of such 'true magnificence' as facilities for exercise. In the final analysis, Stevenson argues, hospital planning attempted to reconcile man's works with that of God.

By bringing to life those involved in designing and working the institutions and those attacking them too, she offers a view of architectural, cultural and medical practice in the period as a whole."--BOOK JACKET.