The British Voluntary Hospital:18^th Century To19^thCentury

The voluntary hospitals played a very important role in the medical history in Britain. They took care of the sick poor while the medical treatment was bad and there were not many medical staffs in Britain.The first voluntary hospital was built in1820s.While the voluntary hospitals expanding in the next two centuries, they took care of thousands of sick poor. Also the hospitals helped the progressing of the medical treatment by providing the surgeons all different kinds of patients for clinic study, in which trained many future surgeons. The voluntary hospitals’financial resources were from subscription, then ended in the1950s.The medical staffs and equipments and medical school of these hospitals remained as the main part of modern hospital. This thesis wrote about the voluntary hospital system, by discussing how did they was found, the administrating and the crisis of1950s of these hospitals.This thesis is divided into three chapters. The reasons of writing on this topic and the research situation of this topic in domestic and foreign countries are included in the introduction. Chapter one discussed the founding background of the voluntary hospitals. The first section of this chapter introduced the hospitals of England before the first voluntary hospital found by saying that there were three kind of institution taking care of the sick people back in medieval England, which were leper houses, almshouses and hospices for sick poor. The situation of the patients of these medieval hospitals and how did they take care of the sick people was discussed in this section. The second section analyzed the economic base of the founding of the voluntary hospitals. Industry development in18th century promoted the economic explosion, therefore people were back to the philanthropy. The financing of the voluntary hospitals were basically from philanthropy donating. The general hospital in18th century and the first voluntary hospital are introduced in the third section. Also the writer discussed the characteristic of voluntary hospitals, which is they are founded by ordinary people by subscribing, and the donators found a committee for administrating the hospital.The founding and the administration of the voluntary hospitals were discussed in chapter two. In section one the writer makes a detailed recording of the founding of a voluntary hospital, while also analyzed people who subscribed. The financing resource comes from different kind of ways besides personal subscription. The voluntary hospital can collect philanthropy donations by holding a concert, a dinner or a ball. The development of voluntary hospitals in19th century is written in this section too. The second section of this chapter discusses the management of the voluntary hospitals in three aspects, which were administration, patient supervision and medical staff conducting. The administration affairs were conducted by administration committee. The members of the committee were voted from the subscribers. When the voluntary hospitals expanded, hospitals hired secretaries and housekeepers to help the committee to administrate. In this section we discussed the qualification and admission progress of the patients, the medical staffs which is consist of physicians, surgeons apothecaries and nurses and their duties, the relation between medical staffs and administration committee, patients. The living condition and medical treatment of the patients, the rules which the patients must obey are also involved in this chapter.Chapter three discussed the effect and meaning of the voluntary hospital by analyzing the growth of it. The first section introduced that voluntary hospitals became medical education centers, by which they play an important part in medical education and the development of clinic medicine. The surgeons played an important role in the expansion of voluntary hospitals. The second section analyzed the structure changing among practitioners. After the voluntary expansion, surgery developed quite a lot, the social position of these three practitioners changed. In the third section, we discussed the nursing revolution movement. After the movement which was carried out by Nightingale, the nurse become clean, quiet, professional and uniformed. The last part of this thesis discussed about the crisis voluntary hospital suffered. In the end of19th century voluntary hospitals can’t get enough subscription.Meanwhile the poor law hospitals and country hospitals were found which took the patients away from voluntary hospitals. Then voluntary hospital began to charge fees for medical care from patients. The world war one and two accelerated this change. British government pays voluntary hospitals for treating the soldiers. After wards the voluntary hospitals were used to get financing support from the government. By the1950s, voluntary hospitals were no longer hospitals basing on subscription. In1948, these hospitals became part of the National Health Service.The point of view of this thesis is that the voluntary hospital takes a very important part in British medical service system. They took care of most of the sick of Britain. Medical progress and medical education happened in these hospitals.The voluntary hospitals helped the building of modern clinic medical system, play a implacable role in British medical history.