Evolution of Hospitals From 18th Century to Present Era

History Of Hospitals

The combined arts and sciences responsible for how society cares for its sick and ill has transformed much throughout recorded history. The greatest and most dramatic changes occurred alongside other historic eras that complimented the changes seen in medicine and health care. The purpose of this essay is to examine the metamorphosis of hospitals from the 18th century until today. In this examination I will focus on the extent of these changes being forced by the ideas of professionalism, medical therapy or technology and the overall character of the changes and how they related to greater historic transformations.

Modern medicine was ushered in with modern times, and revolutionary society changes complemented those which occurred within medicine and health management. The 18th century in historic Europe was ripe with ideas of liberty and freedom, contrasting the previous century's of closed and restricted ideas. The Power Point Slide Presentation " Modern Medicine" highlighted three main ideas that began to drive these changes. These included, the change of medical knowledge being transformed by science and the scientific method, institutional changes made at hospitals, and the new treatments arriving as a result of medical pluralism that saw medicine begin to branch out into more specific avenues (Slide,2).

Marland (2004) explained in the beginning of the 18th century " there was also a huge expansion in the number of different types of hospital. In, Britian, the old general hospitals were complemented by an increasing number and range of specialized hospitals and reflected the new understanding of disease as a localized phenomenon centered on specific organs or tissues

(p.2). It appears that science and the practice if identifying individual causes, maybe even at the expense of ignoring general and common sense was being practiced. This more scientific approach replaced superstition and traditions with routine and practice as its dogma and centered its purpose around methodology and classification.

As a result of this philosophical transformation towards more science-based practice, hospitals began to change to fit these actions. The Power Point Presentation identified that a new concept of disease was no being taken into consideration. This new idea saw the power of the doctor and his prescription playing more of a role than just simply identifying patients symptoms (Slide 8). At this point doctors and nurses began to unite into professions separating themselves from other types of work in society.

New hospitals began to operate in differing ways. While older type of hospitals contained mainly poor people, enduring long stays to cure chronic disease in small and dilapidated circumstance, newer hospitals were becoming larger, run by doctors themselves, where all social classes were treated usually during shorter stays were acute action replaced long drawn out procedures (Slide 7). In today's time we still can notice these changes in hospitals owing this change to the occurrences throughout the 18th century.

As a result of this transformation new trends were to arise causing new problems for hospitals and medical treatment in general. Brunton (2004) explained this new landscape of professionalism. As educational and methodological processes were combining into single sources of execution, many outliers or suspect medical treatments were dismissed. She wrote " a clear differentiation emerged between members of a the regular and orthodox profession, who had gone through recognized forms of training and those who were considered irregular healers and unorthodox practitioners " (P.119).

Although this trend towards standardization may have been needed at this time, it is very probable that many useful and worthy healing techniques became disqualified and obsolete due to a new and dogmatic method of following strict procedure. The scientific method does appeal to this sense of isolating causes but total understanding must take in consideration of environmental and personal circumstances. As a result specialization became the means in which medicine would ultimately rest. This lesson was learned throughout the 18th century and not until the well in into the 19th century are corrections made to alleviate this reliance on segmented opinion instead of holistic understanding.