[The first hospice for the dying in Europe? The 'Hundertsuppen'--hospital in Nuremberg 1770-1813].

Abstract

Hospices for terminally ill and dying patients have so far been considered an 'invention' of the late 19th century. Based on the analysis of admission journals and other archival sources, this paper presents the hospital 'Hundertsuppe' in Nuremberg as an institution which already exhibited most characteristics of a modern hospice 100 years before that. Established, in 1770, as a hospital for chronic diseases, it served almost from the start primarily as an institution for fatally ill, poor patients, who could spend the last months, weeks or days of their life in relative comfort, with nursing and spiritual and medical care. This primary function was explicitly accepted by those in charge of the hospital. It is evidenced by an extraordinarily high mortality of almost 70%, with almost two-thirds of the patients staying for less than 3 months and 'consumption' being the foremost cause of death. In conclusion, the 'Hundertsuppe' is discussed as an exemplary case of an institution for the dying which arose due to the insufficient care for incurable and dying patients in the new 'curative' hospitals; the first English hospices in the late 19th century and the influential St. Christopher's Hospice in the 1960s, commonly attributed to charismatic individual founding figures like Howard Barrett and Cicely Saunders, are shown to have originated from similar contexts.