Human Body Shops
Today I learned about hospitals.
Starr, Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry. New York: Basic Books.
It was not until the 1870s when hospitals and doctors had anything to do with one another. The function of a human body shop - a place where ones goes when something is wrong with the body - used to be accomplished by a traveling doctor who would make house calls. The demands of increasingly concentrated populations, however, along with a growing culture of professional specialization and technical competency, made hospitals places of medical collaboration and of hope for cure instead of places of certain death. When the power of science met the beuracratic efficiency of cities, almshouses that served the role of social welfare up until this period began to morph into the function of what we now know as hospitals. As Starr puts it, "the rise of hospitals...offers a study in the penetration of the market into the ideology and social relations of a precapitalist institution." Max Weber made the distinction between communal relations and associative relations. Communal relations are the bond of families and other ties of personal loyalty, no party having necessarily the same beliefs or ends. Associative relations involve economic exchanges, mutual benefit, and shared interests or ends. The transition of almshouses to hospitals in the late 19th century marked the transition from communal relations of healing - the home - to associative relations of healing - going to a building of professional specialists-strangers.
Interest and success in practices of surgery rose precipitously in the same period. The first use of anesthesia (ether) in 1846 by Morton at Massachussets General Hospital allowed for slower and more careful surgeries to take place. Before anesthesia, doctors needed to be strong, fast, and have the ability to psychologically calm the patient. Penetration of major body cavities began when doctors were able to make people unconscious. Near the turn of the century, the main field of surgical interest and invention was the abdomen. This gives us a clue that there were many problems associated with that part of the body.
John Kellogg was a prime example of someone in the center of this social milieu. The Battle Creek Sanitarium encompassed the transition to a place of healing, where patients entered a business relationship with their caretakers, and where Kellogg pressed the boundaries of penetration into the internal abdominal cavities of the body.
Starr, Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry. New York: Basic Books.
It was not until the 1870s when hospitals and doctors had anything to do with one another. The function of a human body shop - a place where ones goes when something is wrong with the body - used to be accomplished by a traveling doctor who would make house calls. The demands of increasingly concentrated populations, however, along with a growing culture of professional specialization and technical competency, made hospitals places of medical collaboration and of hope for cure instead of places of certain death. When the power of science met the beuracratic efficiency of cities, almshouses that served the role of social welfare up until this period began to morph into the function of what we now know as hospitals. As Starr puts it, "the rise of hospitals...offers a study in the penetration of the market into the ideology and social relations of a precapitalist institution." Max Weber made the distinction between communal relations and associative relations. Communal relations are the bond of families and other ties of personal loyalty, no party having necessarily the same beliefs or ends. Associative relations involve economic exchanges, mutual benefit, and shared interests or ends. The transition of almshouses to hospitals in the late 19th century marked the transition from communal relations of healing - the home - to associative relations of healing - going to a building of professional specialists-strangers.
Interest and success in practices of surgery rose precipitously in the same period. The first use of anesthesia (ether) in 1846 by Morton at Massachussets General Hospital allowed for slower and more careful surgeries to take place. Before anesthesia, doctors needed to be strong, fast, and have the ability to psychologically calm the patient. Penetration of major body cavities began when doctors were able to make people unconscious. Near the turn of the century, the main field of surgical interest and invention was the abdomen. This gives us a clue that there were many problems associated with that part of the body.
John Kellogg was a prime example of someone in the center of this social milieu. The Battle Creek Sanitarium encompassed the transition to a place of healing, where patients entered a business relationship with their caretakers, and where Kellogg pressed the boundaries of penetration into the internal abdominal cavities of the body.
posted by Nick at
10:48 AM
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