Venereal Disease, Hospitals, and the Urban Poor ; London's "foul Wards," 1600-1800This book explores how London society responded to the dilemma of the rampant spread of the pox among the poor. Some have asserted that public authorities turned their backs on the "foul" and only began to offer care for venereal patients in the Enlightenment. An exploration of hospitals and workhouses shows a much more impressive public health response. London hospitals established "foul wards" at least as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Reconstruction of these wards shows that, far from banning paupers with the pox, hospitals made treating them one of their primary services. Not merely present in hospitals, venereal patients were omnipresent. Yet the "foul" comprised a unique category of patient. The sexual nature of their ailment guaranteed that they would be treated quite differently than all other patients. Class and gender informed patients' experiences in crucial ways. The shameful nature of the disease, and the gendered notion of shame itself, meant that men and women faced quite different circumstances. There emerged a gendered geography of London hospitals as men predominated in fee-charging hospitals, while sick women crowded into workhouses. Patients frequently desired to conceal their infection. This generated innovative services for elite patients who could buy medical privacy by hiring their own doctor. However, the public scrutiny that hospitalization demanded forced poor patients to be creative as they sought access to medical care that they could not afford. Thus, Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor offers new insights on patients' experiences of illness and on London's health care system itself. Kevin Siena is Assistant Professor of History at Trent University. |
Contents
The Foul Disease Privacy and | 30 |
LIST OF FIGURES | 40 |
The Foul Disease in the Royal Hospitals | 62 |
The Eighteenth Century | 96 |
Annual Average Number of Clean Patients Supported | 99 |
The Foul Disease and the Poor Law | 135 |
Gender Breakdown of Venereal Patients in Four | 162 |
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Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: London's "Foul Wards", 1600-1800 Kevin Siena No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
Account admission admitted advertisements Andrew applied Bart's Bartholomew's Hospital beds Bromfeild Cambridge University Press charity churchwardens claim clean patients consider cure diagnosis discharged doctors Early Modern Early Modern England Early Modern London edited eighteenth Eighteenth-Century London Elizabeth English entered evidence fees female foul disease foul patients foul wards foul women governors Guy's Guy's Hospital Hanway History of St Hitchcock hospital's Ibid illness indicate inmates institutions John Jonas Hanway Journal Lock Asylum Lock Board Book Lock's London Hospital London Lock Hospital Madan Magdalen Margaret's Mary mercury Merians Misericordia moral number of patients ordered outhouse patients outhouses parish paupers percent period plebeian practitioners prostitutes records reform Routledge Roy Porter royal hospitals salivation Secret Malady Sepulchre settlement seventeenth century sexual sick surgeon symptoms Syphilis Third Gender Thomas's Hospital Treatise treatment Trumbach Venereal Disease venereal patients Westminster William workhouse workhouse committees workhouse infirmaries