The Making of Modern Hospitals in Central Europe between the Enlightenment and the Second World War

This book lls an existing gap in the history of modern medicine by examining Central European hospitals. It does not subscribe to the “big bang theory” of the sudden rise of the modern hospital. Instead, it traces the (micro-)history of the municipal, university, and church hospitals, as well as the provincial institutions for the mentally ill. It raises the question of how authorities, burghers, physicians, patients, and staf dismantled caregiving premises and promoted the establishment of modern healthcare infrastructures while Central Europe was still widely associated with menacing plague and cholera epidemics.