Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum VisitingGraham Mooney, Jonathan Reinarz 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. |
Contents
1 | |
FamilyCentred Care in American Hospitals | 55 |
Pariahs or Partners? | 111 |
Notes on Contributors | 309 |
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Common terms and phrases
admission Annual Report Archives Ashburn Hall attended Auckland Australia BCLA Birmingham Blackwell's Island Board British Cambridge cancer Ceylon chapter charity child Children's Hospital China clinical colonial Commissioners Committee Minutes cultural Eastern Daily Press emphasised England entertainment family members female fever Fremantle Asylum Goodna Governors Minutes Health History of Medicine hospital visitors hospital’s hospitalisation house visitors Ibid in-patients India infection infectious disease Infirmary insane inspection Inspector institutions isolation hospitals Jenny Lind lady visitors leukaemia Lock Hospital London Lunacy Lunatic Asylum madhouses Mapother matron medical officers mothers nineteenth century nurses official visitors parents Parker patients pauper physician poor Pottergate Street practice Private Asylum Psychiatry Queen's Hospital Queensland recreation reform Reinarz relatives role Routledge Royal Sick Children smallpox social Society South Asia South Wales therapy treatment twentieth century University Press Utica Victorian visiting voluntary hospitals wards women YCAA York Zealand