Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland: care and teaching at the Royal Informary of Edinburgh
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The Sick Poor and Voluntary Hospitals
“Desirous of accommodations in the house”: the road to hospital admission
The origins of the British hospital movement
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
2. Hospital Staff and the Admission of Patients
Who attends the sick? Infirmary professionals and their helpers
“The patient comes into our hands”: admissions process
3. Patients and their Diseases
Entering diagnoses in the General Register
The spectrum of diseases at the Infirmary, 1770-1800
Length of hospitalization
4. Hospital Care: State of the Medical Art
Principles of eighteenth-century therapeutics
The context of hospital Care
Therapeutic effects of hospitalization
The use of drugs
Physical methods
Exercise
Dietetics
Effects of treatment
Complications
Discharge from the hospital
Conclusion
5. Clinical Instruction
Background
Organization and enrollment
Students and clinical teaching
Clinical teaching and the patients
Instructional objectives
The didactic role of autopsies
The teaching of surgery and midwifery
Edinburgh and Europe contrasted
Conclusion
Epilogue
General considerations
Medical therapeutics
Eighteenth-century hospitals: for better or worse?
The “birth” of the clinic
The final blessing
Appendixes
Sources
Selected clinical cases
Clinical teaching
Drug usage at the Infirmary: the example of Dr. Andrew Duncan, Sr.
(by J. Worth Estes)
