The Invention of a Medical Institution?: A Discussion of Hospitals Around 1800

iscussing health care between self-help, intermediary organisations and formal poor relief in terms of choices between the informal and the formal it seems quite clear on which side research of hospitals in the late 18 century is placed. Based on the formula of the “Birth of the Clinic” and relying on sociological research of hospitals of the late 1960s and 1970s wide parts of the German-speaking social history of medicine dedicated to the 19 and early 20 century development of the modern hospital claimed their historical subject to be “one of the most complex institutions of man.” This research abandoned the suggestion of a long-term transition from the medieval hospital to the late 20 century high-techclinic in which religion has been slowly disappearing from hospitals while clinical observation and permanently growing knowledge of nature of disease and finally scientific medicine captured the charitable home of benevolence. This research had to suggest a systematic rupture around 1800. Two reasons were named for that. Firstly, in a systematic sense, the main objective of medieval and early modern hospitals was not the physical cure of sick patients (i.e. the restoration of their ability to work). Being a charitable foundation it was dedicated to the salvation of its founder’s soul. Secondly, as a historical argument, it is obviously striking that the modern hospital fits extremely well in the discourse of medical police in the late 18 century. An example reference for these discussions is the German book published in 1790: “On the advantages of (modern) hospitals for the state.” Both arguments have been criticised in recent historical research. On the one hand, one could ask if there were any institutions that were not dedicated to the salvation of the Christians’ souls in medieval Europe. At least in this very shortened form, the systematic argument is not really convincing. Furthermore, there was of