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From the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in the 1830s, to her death in 1901, the social landscape of Britain was profoundly changed. The evolution of hospitals’ form and function was not the least of these. Under the influence of social reformers, innovative architects, and, not least, medical practitioners themselves, the theory and practice of hospital care were adapted to changing ideas about physical and moral hygiene. This podcast focuses on the development of one such institution: the General Infirmary in the industrial powerhouse of Leeds, which expanded along with the city’s population. Its buildings, designed by George Gilbert Scott, represented the most up-to-date medical theory--and most grand architectural invention--of late Victorian Britain, and served as a monument to how this prosperous society desired to see itself.
Podcaster: Lucy
Further Reading
Jacqueline Banerjee, “Leeds General Infirmary.” http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/scott/18.html Steven Cherry, Medical Services and the Hospitals in Britain, 1860-1939. Cambridge University Press (1996) Richard Cork, “Victorian Values,” in: The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals Yale University Press (2012), 309-334. Lindsay Granshaw, “ ‘Fame and Fortune by Means of Bricks and Mortar:’ The Medical Profession and Specialist Hospitals in Britain, 1800-1948,” in: The Hospital in History, eds. Lindsay Granshaw and Porter. Routledge (1989), 199-220. Ellen S. More, Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995. Harvard University Press (1999) Florence Nightingale, Notes on Hospitals. Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green (1863) https://archive.org/details/notesonhospital01nighgoog Keith Waddington, “Paying for the Sick Poor: Financing Medicine under the Victorian Poor Law—The Case of the Whitechapel Union, 1850-1900,” in: Financing Medicine: The British Experience since 1750, eds. Martin Gorsky and Sally Sheard. Routledge (2006), 95-111. Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com) Leave a Reply. |