[The nature of hospitals and hospital review in the late Middle Ages and in early modern times].
The paper is to point out some characteristic facts on the medieval christian and early modern hospital, its hygienic situation, and its critique. Light will be thrown on the unhealthy effects of keeping cattle in the medieval town, on its problems with water supply and the removal of feces, on the challenges of pestilence and leprosy, and finally on the hygienic state of the early modern European hospital. The source for that will be the didactic picaresque novel "Landstörtzer: Gusman von Alfarche oder Picaro genannt" (1615) by the Jesuit pupil Aegidius Albertinus (1560-1620). Albertinus' novel shows that the early modern hospital sometimes was far from being a clean place, and that someone could catch something like a gastrointestinal disease or even the worse more easily in a hospital than elsewhere.
Eckart
W U
WU
Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg.
D005060:Europe; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049691:History, Medieval; D006761:Hospitals / Q000266:history*; D006920:Hygiene / Q000266:history*; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D008512:Medicine in the Arts
Spitalwesen und Spitalkritik im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit.