Permeable Walls

Graham Moonet

ISBN 10: 9042025999 / ISBN 13: 9789042025998

Published by BERTRAMS PRINT ON DEMAND Aug 2009, 2009

About this Item

Neuware - Visiting relatives and friends in medical institutions is a common practice in all corners of the world. People probably go into hospitals as a visitor more frequently than they do as a patient. Permeable Walls 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. Adopting a wide-ranging definition of visitors, from official inquirers to family members, Permeable Walls provides an innovative perspective on hospitals and asylums historically and will interest historians of medicine, charity and governance, as well as healthcare policy-makers.

Seller Inventory # 9789042025998

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Permeable Walls
• Publisher: BERTRAMS PRINT ON DEMAND Aug 2009
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9042025999
• ISBN 13: 9789042025998
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 24D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 24 millimeters depth
• Weight: 712 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Visiting relatives and friends in medical institutions is a common practice in all corners of the world. People probably go into hospitals as a visitor more frequently than they do as a patient. Permeable Walls 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.

About the Author

Graham Mooney is an assistant professor in the Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. He has published widely on the history of public health, historical demography and historical epidemiology and is currently writing a book on infectious disease surveillance in Victorian Britain. Jonathan Reinarz is the director of the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Birmingham. His research addresses the history of hospitals and medical education, and he also continues to undertake research on the social and economic history of England from 1750 to 1950, with a particular interest in the history of alcohol. He has authored The Birth of a Provincial Hospital: the early years of the General Hospital, Birmingham, 1765-1790 (Stratford-upon-Avon: Dugdale Society, 2003) and edited Medicine and Society in the Midlands: 1750-1950 (Birmingham: Midland History Occasional Publications, 2007). His latest monograph is Health Care in Birmingham: The Birmingham Teaching Hospitals, 1779–1939 (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2009).