The Hospitals and Population Growth: The Voluntary General Hospitals, Mortality and Local Populations in the English Provinces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Part 2

Abstract

Summary In the second part of this article the number and nature of hospital cases treated in the light of physical, medical and surgical limitations are examined. Each hospital's records of treatment are summarised and discussed. Whether or not the hospitals were able to tackle successfully some of the major diseases and causes of death and thereby exert a positive influence in reducing mortality rates is then considered. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, that the hospitals had a positive role to play within their patient catchment areas, but that this was insufficient to affect national mortality trends decisively. Secondly, the hospitals' influence was of greater importance before the mid-nineteenth century. Despite advances in medical knowledge and techniques, population pressure, overcrowding and the growing incidence of serious cases in hospitals coupled with outbreaks of 'hospital diseases' meant that the results of hospital treatment may have become less impressive. But even then, mortality levels in the hospitals were low and the hospitals did not merit their reputation of being 'gateways to death' or as institutions 'which positively did harm'.

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