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Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870-1940

by Jeanne Kisacky

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Hospital design in a changing era of medicine

$68.79 USD
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Hardcover New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Hospital design in a changing era of medicine

Jeanne Kisacky examines U.S. hospital architecture from the 1870s through the 1940s, a period when hospitals changed in social role and physical form. The book connects the shift from charitable institutions serving the poor to centers of advanced treatment for people across classes with a broader move from low-rise, decentralized facilities to taller, centralized buildings. It also traces tensions between medical and architectural expertise, and between designing a building as part of therapy and equipping it for increasingly technology-assisted procedures. Floor plans, drawings, and photographs support an account of hospitals as both records of social and medical change and structures that shaped hospital practice.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in the history of hospitals and medical care in the United States.
  • Architecture readers seeking a historical study grounded in building plans and visual material.
  • Readers exploring how social change and professional debates influenced institutional design.

Themes

Hospital architectureMedical and social historyUrban institutionsProfessional expertise and design

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Rise of the Modern Hospital is a focused examination of hospital design in the United States from the 1870s through the 1940s. This understudied period witnessed profound changes in hospitals as they shifted from last charitable resorts for the sick poor to premier locations of cutting-edge medical treatment for all classes, and from low-rise decentralized facilities to high-rise centralized structures. Jeanne Kisacky reveals the changing role of the hospital within the city, the competing claims of doctors and architects for expertise in hospital design, and the influence of new medical theories and practices on established traditions. She traces the dilemma designers faced between creating an environment that could function as a therapy in and of itself and an environment that was essentially a tool for the facilitation of increasingly technologically assisted medical procedures. Heavily illustrated with floor plans, drawings, and photographs, this book considers the hospital building as both a cultural artifact, revelatory of external medical and social change, and a cultural determinant, actively shaping what could and did take place within hospitals.
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