Death of the Old Hospital

Abstract

The major changes in the medical model that had occurred by the late twentieth century found immediate expression in various shifts in clinical perception and practice, from the intimate encounter with patients to the wider strategies of health surveillance. In addition, the more salient organization of medical care also came to reflect the new medical framework. In particular, the nineteenth century centrepiece of clinical practice, the hospital, could hardly escape the reverberations of the collapse of the conceptual infrastructure that had for so long sustained it.