Since World War Two, hospitals have secured their position as the “crown jewel” of healthcare systems worldwide: the obvious place to be for sick people needing their former strength restored, their pain relieved and their lives prolonged. How did the hospital acquire this prominent position in health care and in society? This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the 2009 Bergen workshop on the history of health and medicine, organized by the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen, which explored some of the paths of this important development.

 The contributions discuss the existence of a Nordic or Scandinavian healthcare system paralleling the Nordic model of social welfare; the development and practices of hospitals, laboratories, institutions and voluntary associations in different parts of Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Spain; and the contribution of medical professions and specific managerial techniques, such as strategic communication, to the development of medical institutions.

Content

Astri Andresen, Tore Grønlie, William Hubbard and Teemu Ryymin: Histories of medical institutions 7

Haldor Byrkjeflot: Comparing worlds of welfare and systems of healthcare – Lessons from recent research on hospital reforms and healthcare systems 13

Tore Grønlie: Modern Scandinavian hospital history in recent Norwegian research 32

Teemu Ryymin: Growth of local medical institutions in Hordaland, 1890s–1920 43

Svein Ivar Angell: Strategic communication and Haukeland Hospital 68

Anna Lundberg and Ingrid Svensson: Restored to Society – The Recovering of Mentally Ill Patients in the Northern Parts of Sweden 1893–1902 81

Åshild Fause: The nursing home for the mentally ill in Hammerfest, 1930–1942 94

Anne Hardy: Special connexions: Bloomsbury, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the medical community of London in the nineteenth Century 103

Ingunn Elstad: Hospital nursing in transition, Northern Norway 1850–1910 111

Enrique Perdiguero-Gil and Ramón Castejón-Bolea: Auxilio Social: Health care and social policies in Spain during and after the Civil War (1936–1939) 129

Ximo Guillem-Llobat: The foundation of a new site for food safety regulation. The Municipal Chemical Laboratory of València (1881–1936) 142

Josep L. Barona: In the Name of Health. The Instituto Nacional de Higiene Alfonso XIII and laboratory campaigns in Spanish rural areas and African colonies, 1910–1924 154

Morten Hammerborg: The campaign to eradicate typhoid fever in Western Norway 170

Contributors 186

ISBN 978-82-7099-562-2, 187 PP., paperback
Format: 17x24 cm, weight 0,4 kg, year of publication 2009, language: English