Permeable walls
Subtitle: historical perspectives on hospital and asylum visiting
By: edited by Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz
Series: Clio medica -- 86; Wellcome Institute series in the history of medicine
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Amsterdam; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9789042025998; 9789042026322
Subjects: Hospital-Patient Relations; History, 18th Century; Psychiatric Hospitals; Psychiatric hospitals; Professional-Family Relations; Health Policy; History, 19th Century; Visiting the sick; History, 20th Century; Hospitals; Visitors to Patients; History
Description: This book is the first book devoted to the history of hospital and asylum visiting and deflects attention from medical history's more traditionally studied constituencies, patients and doctors. Covering the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries, and taking case studies from around the globe, the authors demonstrate that hospitals and asylums could be remarkably permeable institutions. However, policies towards visitors have varied from outright exclusion, as in the case of some isolation hospitals in Victorian Britain, to near open access in the first Chinese missionary hospitals. Historical studies of visitors and visiting, as a result, tell us much about the changing relationship between healthcare institutions and the communities they serve. These histories are particularly relevant at a time when service providers seek ways to involve patients' representatives in healthcare decision making; to control hospital super-bugs; and to make the hospital environment accessible yet safe and secure. With the re-emergence of restricted visiting, the subject remains one of the most emotive topics in the history of institutional medicine.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.