Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting
Graham Mooney, Jonathan Reinarz, eds. Permeable Walls: Historical
Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting. Amsterdam Rodopi, 2009.
352 pp. EUR 70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-420-2599-8.
Reviewed by Ian Miller (University of Manchester)
Published on H-Disability (January, 2010)
Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison
Historicizing Hospital and Asylum Visiting
Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz's _Permeable Walls _is the first
collection entirely devoted to the history of visiting patients in the
hospital and asylum setting, neatly deflecting attention away from a
more traditional focus within the history of medicine upon the
experiences of patients and doctors within the institutional setting.
This is an important contribution to the historiography, given that
visiting patients, relatives, and friends in medical institutions is a
universal practice worldwide, and that people tend to visit the
hospital as a visitor more frequently than they do as a patient.
Consideration is therefore given to an experience that is not so much
part of the institution, but one that is periodically and momentarily
drawn into its ambit. Throughout the collection, visitors are
presented as an understudied constituency in medical history, and
their experiences are explored in broad social, cultural, and
geographical perspectives. It is shown, for instance, that discussion
of the wider significance of visiting in fact draws attention to
issues such as urban governance, philanthropy, the public sphere,
civil society, and citizenship. This is all achieved via discussion of
the different types of visitors: patient visitors, public visitors,
house visitors, and official visitors.
_Permeable Walls _covers the period between the eighteenth and
twentieth centuries, and incorporates case studies from around the
globe. Whilst the authors agree that hospitals and asylums are
remarkably penetrable places, policies towards visitors are shown to
have varied dramatically, according to to the type of institution or
the wider sociocultural context of attitudes towards the ill.
Ultimately, these studies reveal much about the changing relationship
between different communities and healthcare institutions. For
instance, the first Chinese missionary hospitals adopted a policy of
near open access, contrasting sharply with policies of outright
exclusion in British isolation hospitals during the Victorian era.
_Permeable Walls _also presents a view of visiting that extends far
beyond the familial, aiming to deepen understandings of who visitors
were, what visiting involved, and how the practice evolved
historically. It concerns relatives and friends, administrators,
managers, philanthropists, lay care-givers, priests and ministers,
entertainers, and tourists. Each visitor is shown as holding different
roles, so that, for instance, family visitors offer emotional and
practical support for the institutionalized, providing an intimate
link to a familiar world that is beyond reach.
The first section of the collection deals principally with hospital
visiting. Jonathan Reinarz's opening article provides an overview of
hospital visiting in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He
focuses on Birmingham, and reveals that visiting was dependent upon
issues related to shifting conceptions of infection, gender, and
class. Michelle Renshaw skillfully links debate over family-centered
care in America with discussion of the role of family visitors in
missionary hospitals in China, within which we hear of families being
present at surgical operations and the importance placed upon the
provision of food by relatives, a tradition continued as a result of
the centrality of dietetics to traditional Chinese medicine.
One of the strongest chapters presented here is Graham Mooney's
contribution on the subject of infection in mid-Victorian isolation
hospitals, a piece which firmly locates hospital visiting within a far
wider cultural context of citizenship. Shifting attention away from
diseased patients, he discusses the interaction between individual
liberty and governance with visitation policy. Kevin Siena, meanwhile,
reveals how London's Lock Hospital depended so heavily upon charity
that its administrators attempted valiantly to project a positive
image of the hospital in the face of cultural and moral assumptions
about the syphilis patient's right to charity. Policies governing
visitation here are shown to have served numerous ends at different
times, including policing patients, introducing moral reform, and
obscuring the realities of the ward from public views in order to
ensure that prospective donors only saw what administrators wished
them to see.
There then follows discussion of children's hospitals, and the unique
role that visitors played within these in comparison to other
institutions. Hence, we find Andrea Tanner analyzing the role of
visitors in the Victorian London Children's Hospital, revealing the
declining role of the mother as visitor as nurses gained an increasing
nurturing role, and the institution's ability to bolster its
reputation through official visits.
The latter part of the edited collection deals with visitors entering
the asylum setting. James H Mill and Sanjeev Jain provide a
fascinatingly informative account of Edward Mapother's visits to India
and Ceylon in the early twentieth century, considering visiting from
the viewpoint of an expert visitor. Meanwhile American asylum tourism
is provocatively analyzed by Janet Miron, who suggests that asylums
were deeply embedded within the social and cultural landscape of the
time, and that visiting can be used as a platform from which to
analyze the history of popular public attitudes towards the mentally
ill.
Overall, _Permeable Walls _offers a fascinating insight into a new
area of medical history. Furthermore, these histories appear to be
particularly relevant today at a time when service providers seek ways
to involve patients' representatives in healthcare decision making, to
control hospital superbugs, and to make the hospital environment
accessible yet simultaneously safe and secure. Restricted visiting has
reemerged once more, making many of the themes explored in this
collection relevant as well as emotive.
Citation: Ian Miller. Review of Mooney, Graham; Reinarz, Jonathan,
eds., _Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum
Visiting_. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=26216
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
------
H-MedAnthro: H-Net Network on Medical Anthropology
Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting. Amsterdam Rodopi, 2009.
352 pp. EUR 70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-420-2599-8.
Reviewed by Ian Miller (University of Manchester)
Published on H-Disability (January, 2010)
Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison
Historicizing Hospital and Asylum Visiting
Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz's _Permeable Walls _is the first
collection entirely devoted to the history of visiting patients in the
hospital and asylum setting, neatly deflecting attention away from a
more traditional focus within the history of medicine upon the
experiences of patients and doctors within the institutional setting.
This is an important contribution to the historiography, given that
visiting patients, relatives, and friends in medical institutions is a
universal practice worldwide, and that people tend to visit the
hospital as a visitor more frequently than they do as a patient.
Consideration is therefore given to an experience that is not so much
part of the institution, but one that is periodically and momentarily
drawn into its ambit. Throughout the collection, visitors are
presented as an understudied constituency in medical history, and
their experiences are explored in broad social, cultural, and
geographical perspectives. It is shown, for instance, that discussion
of the wider significance of visiting in fact draws attention to
issues such as urban governance, philanthropy, the public sphere,
civil society, and citizenship. This is all achieved via discussion of
the different types of visitors: patient visitors, public visitors,
house visitors, and official visitors.
_Permeable Walls _covers the period between the eighteenth and
twentieth centuries, and incorporates case studies from around the
globe. Whilst the authors agree that hospitals and asylums are
remarkably penetrable places, policies towards visitors are shown to
have varied dramatically, according to to the type of institution or
the wider sociocultural context of attitudes towards the ill.
Ultimately, these studies reveal much about the changing relationship
between different communities and healthcare institutions. For
instance, the first Chinese missionary hospitals adopted a policy of
near open access, contrasting sharply with policies of outright
exclusion in British isolation hospitals during the Victorian era.
_Permeable Walls _also presents a view of visiting that extends far
beyond the familial, aiming to deepen understandings of who visitors
were, what visiting involved, and how the practice evolved
historically. It concerns relatives and friends, administrators,
managers, philanthropists, lay care-givers, priests and ministers,
entertainers, and tourists. Each visitor is shown as holding different
roles, so that, for instance, family visitors offer emotional and
practical support for the institutionalized, providing an intimate
link to a familiar world that is beyond reach.
The first section of the collection deals principally with hospital
visiting. Jonathan Reinarz's opening article provides an overview of
hospital visiting in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He
focuses on Birmingham, and reveals that visiting was dependent upon
issues related to shifting conceptions of infection, gender, and
class. Michelle Renshaw skillfully links debate over family-centered
care in America with discussion of the role of family visitors in
missionary hospitals in China, within which we hear of families being
present at surgical operations and the importance placed upon the
provision of food by relatives, a tradition continued as a result of
the centrality of dietetics to traditional Chinese medicine.
One of the strongest chapters presented here is Graham Mooney's
contribution on the subject of infection in mid-Victorian isolation
hospitals, a piece which firmly locates hospital visiting within a far
wider cultural context of citizenship. Shifting attention away from
diseased patients, he discusses the interaction between individual
liberty and governance with visitation policy. Kevin Siena, meanwhile,
reveals how London's Lock Hospital depended so heavily upon charity
that its administrators attempted valiantly to project a positive
image of the hospital in the face of cultural and moral assumptions
about the syphilis patient's right to charity. Policies governing
visitation here are shown to have served numerous ends at different
times, including policing patients, introducing moral reform, and
obscuring the realities of the ward from public views in order to
ensure that prospective donors only saw what administrators wished
them to see.
There then follows discussion of children's hospitals, and the unique
role that visitors played within these in comparison to other
institutions. Hence, we find Andrea Tanner analyzing the role of
visitors in the Victorian London Children's Hospital, revealing the
declining role of the mother as visitor as nurses gained an increasing
nurturing role, and the institution's ability to bolster its
reputation through official visits.
The latter part of the edited collection deals with visitors entering
the asylum setting. James H Mill and Sanjeev Jain provide a
fascinatingly informative account of Edward Mapother's visits to India
and Ceylon in the early twentieth century, considering visiting from
the viewpoint of an expert visitor. Meanwhile American asylum tourism
is provocatively analyzed by Janet Miron, who suggests that asylums
were deeply embedded within the social and cultural landscape of the
time, and that visiting can be used as a platform from which to
analyze the history of popular public attitudes towards the mentally
ill.
Overall, _Permeable Walls _offers a fascinating insight into a new
area of medical history. Furthermore, these histories appear to be
particularly relevant today at a time when service providers seek ways
to involve patients' representatives in healthcare decision making, to
control hospital superbugs, and to make the hospital environment
accessible yet simultaneously safe and secure. Restricted visiting has
reemerged once more, making many of the themes explored in this
collection relevant as well as emotive.
Citation: Ian Miller. Review of Mooney, Graham; Reinarz, Jonathan,
eds., _Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum
Visiting_. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=26216
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
------
H-MedAnthro: H-Net Network on Medical Anthropology