#Medical Sociology
#Sociology of Health and Illness
Evolution of Hospital as social organisation
1) Hospital as a religious centre
2) Hospital as a poor house
3) Hospital as a death house
4) Hospital as center of medical technology
1) Hospital as a religious center –
The Romans first established hospitals as medical facilities. The origin of the hospital is linked to Christianity. In Christianity, it was emphasized that by helping the sick and needy, man attains salvation. As a result, clergy in the Roman Catholic Church were encouraged to establish hospitals and hospitals as features of the Christian effort. By the end of the 15th century an extensive network of hospitals had been established throughout Western Europe. But these hospitals were not according to the modern society, these hospitals were also meant as collective community centers for the care of the patients of the lower class. The religious character or features of the hospital began to disappear during the Renaissance Reformation.
2) Hospital as a Poorhouse-
The secularization of hospitals during the Renaissance changed their role. Hospitals moved from church control to state control. Hospitals provided patient care as well as food and shelter to the poor.
3) Hospital as a death house –
In this phase specialist doctors started joining the hospitals but there was lack of high technology in the hospitals. Poor sick people started coming for hospitalization but there was chaos in the hospital, infected people and non-infected sick people lived together due to which the infection started spreading and people started dying. Even the doctors were unable to save. Whereas people used to come here to get healthy. So in this phase people used to see it as the death house.
4) Hospital as center of medical technology–
By the end of the 19th century a new image of the hospital developed where individuals of all social classes could receive high-quality medical care and expect their disorders to be cured. With the development of medical technology, antiseptic measures were also used to reduce hospital infections. Hospitals were not only properly sanitized and ventilated but patients with infectious diseases were isolated in special areas of the hospital and the hospital staff was asked to wash their hands after working with these patients. Items like surgical masks, rubber gloves, surgical instruments, began to be used. Hospitals began to recruit trained nurses, laboratory technicians, physicians of specialized skill. In the twentieth century, the hospital became the major institutional resource available to the society to deal with health and disease.
Also read-
Auguste Comte law of three stages
Auguste Comte positivism theory
सामाजिक संगठन के रूप में अस्पताल का विकास नोट्स
#Medical Sociology
#Sociology of Health and Illness
#Evolution of Hospital as social organisation