Krankenhaus und lokale Politik 1770–1850: Das Beispiel Düsseldorf

Extract

Fritz Dross, Krankenhaus und lokale Politik 1770–1850: Das Beispiel Düsseldorf , Essen: Klartext, 2004. Pp. 400. €24.90. ISBN 3–89861–257–0.

‘Only the sick are poor’. This quotation from Dr Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland in 1809 sets the stage for this innovative examination of the provision of health care in Düsseldorf from 1780 to 1850. Fritz Dross argues that historians have often failed to examine the relationship between sickness and poverty, despite the fact that in the minds of nineteenth-century observers there was an obvious link between the two. By separating these themes, we inhibit our understanding of how small hospitals were transformed into substantially larger institutions by the mid-1800s. Dross is not interested in viewing the creation of the institution simply as a medical phenomenon consisting of doctors, patients, new methods of treatment and power relations. Instead, he is much more eager to reveal the functions the hospital and Krankenhaus was intended to serve while illuminating the rationale underlying changes made to the provision of medical care during the 80 years he examines. He contends that at each stage of its growth the primary institution responsible for providing medical care represented much more to the general public than a place where the sick could go to receive treatment.