Preliminary Programme

Wed 30 March
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 31 March
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 1 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 2 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

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Wednesday 30 March 2016 8.30 - 10.30
Y-1 HEA19 Health Care
Seminario Ha Sciencia, Nivel 2
Network: Health and Environment Chair: Ida Milne
Organizers: - Discussant: Ida Milne
Stephan Curtis : Stockholm's Sabbatsberg Hospital and Sophiahemmet (School for Nurses): Products of Changing Places
This paper examines the construction of one of the main hospitals (Sabbatsbergs Sjukhus) in Stockholm in the late 1870s. One of the key figures behind this hospital was Dr. Warfvinge who frequently travelled to the continent to examine the latest innovations in hospital care; some of which were incorporated into ... (Show more)
This paper examines the construction of one of the main hospitals (Sabbatsbergs Sjukhus) in Stockholm in the late 1870s. One of the key figures behind this hospital was Dr. Warfvinge who frequently travelled to the continent to examine the latest innovations in hospital care; some of which were incorporated into this institution. In the mid-1880s he was also instrumental to the construction of a nursing school which was the first school of its kind in Sweden and combined both formal teaching and clinical experience for approximately 60 women per year. In many ways the debates about which architectural style would provide the healthiest and most (cost) effective use of space were similar to those held elsewhere in Europe. Similarly, questions about how best to incorporate nurses' training into such facilities were being asked across the continent.

One might view the construction and design of the hospital and nursing school as the product of one person’s energy and initiative, the dissemination of medical knowledge throughout Europe, or even the state’s increasing and necessary involvement in public health. However, such explanations only go so far and it is important to situate the building of these medical institutions in their social context of rapid urbanisation, increasing class divisions and growing social unrest. It is the purpose of this paper to tie together the various medical, social and political impulses that helped create these institutions. This study reveals that the decisions made about the type of hospital to be built and how nurses should receive their training resembled those made in other European cities, but the foundations upon which those decisions were made were uniquely Swedish in origin. (Show less)

Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson : The Economics of Scientific Births: Conditions and Limitations for Swedish Midwifery during the Late 1800s
My paper discusses late nineteenth century debates between Swedish midwives and doctors about the economic resources and responsibilities for transforming obstetric science into obstetric practice. One of the central tensions involved determining who should be financially responsible for this project, the public government or the private midwife? Because they were ... (Show more)
My paper discusses late nineteenth century debates between Swedish midwives and doctors about the economic resources and responsibilities for transforming obstetric science into obstetric practice. One of the central tensions involved determining who should be financially responsible for this project, the public government or the private midwife? Because they were both self-employed and subordinated to government regulation (National Midwifery Act), midwives were particularly invested in these debates. My paper examines midwives’ advocacy for economic stability in context of the emerging bureaucratization and professionalization of the Swedish health care system.
Two factors are central to my discussion: One is the scientific aspect of the antiseptic breakthrough. Laboratory discovery of pathogens resulted in a new emphasis on the importance of obstetric hygiene and helped to reduce the high number of deaths in puerperal fever. The second factor is the economic conditions for the midwives. As self-employed providers, they had to pay for childbirth equipment, and a large part of the midwife’s income was spent to fund these purchases. The solvency of this exchange was severally challenged by the expectation that a midwife now had to purchase expensive disinfectants. This generated a big debate among Swedish midwives, and was specially discussed in the Swedish Midwives’ Association. The profession’s journal, Jordemodern, published notices that showed the arguments presented for and against the scientific breakthrough and the financial responsibility it imposed on midwives to be able to translate science into practice.
The debate demonstrated the complex relationship between the state and the midwives, and highlighted how self-employed providers responded to state regulation. The complications were most visible when it came to economic needs and medical duties. In addition to examining the midwife’s views, I also examine Swedish parliamentary discussion of this issue. Their debates further demonstrate that the implementation of scientific birthing was ultimately dependent on financial resources. They also reveal the strong correlation between the individual midwife's economic status, her activities among rich or poor, and her location in urban or rural areas and her ability to implement scientific knowledge into a financially feasible birthing practice. (Show less)

Daniela Santos Silva : The (Re)definition of Hospitals in Portuguese Welfare System. An International and Conceptual Debate during the Nineteenth Century
The states and their welfare and health care systems take effect in the mind-sets about behaviour and conceptions towards the poor, the sick and the pauper, as well as in the reformation of practices and ideals towards the institutes that are meant to interact with them. However, it’s also an ... (Show more)
The states and their welfare and health care systems take effect in the mind-sets about behaviour and conceptions towards the poor, the sick and the pauper, as well as in the reformation of practices and ideals towards the institutes that are meant to interact with them. However, it’s also an influence that can or cannot be in agreement with other kind of power: medicine and scientifical knowledge. Thus the public policies about social welfare, health care and poor relief are revised, redraft and envisioned by the medical professional class, as legitimated agents and actors of the nation’s social control structures in the nineteenth century. This professional class, whom were called by the governments to scientifically certify political measures regarding medical police control, as well as administrative, legal and public health issues, acquired, by capitalizing the State’s legitimacy in those matters, a position of professional responsibility to interfere in other questions, that, in spite of concerning to poor relief and health care, were confined and limited to the political governance action. Hospital buildings and constructions, administration, practices and functions, were brought to their agendas and broadly debated, interfering with the State´s political action and economic and social concerns, quite different from theirs. While some medical statements required the extinction of hospitals by their hopelessness, others found that clinical science could in fact save them and turn them into useful and beneficial institutions for medical care.
The Portuguese hospital scenario comes with a singular framework regarding international realities by their structure and nature. Since the fifteenth century, poor relief and health care were strictly controlled and mandate by the State´s jurisdiction, preformed by a network of institutions all over Portuguese territory, ruled by one standard program and out of reach to any Ecclesial authority interference. However, these institutions were founded and sustained upon the Christian charity axiom, as their practices and representations towards poor relief and hospitals. Therefore, this mind-set circumstance, adversely constrained the process of hospitals reforms, proclaimed and settled by medical science, regarding to the paramount principles of the how’s and why’s in their clinical conceptions permanently over the century.
The questions to be raised by this paper are, as well, how and why the international debate towards reconceptualising hospitals - through the media dialogue, treaties and associative scientific discussions accounts - were chosen by Portuguese medical class, using them as stimulation by the similarity of problem recognition in one way, and, as resolutions in another by experimented successes. Through the use of Conceptual History methods it is possible to identify as well, correlations between these State’s welfare policies and their own hospital care representations. Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic provided also the guidelines to offer a comparative scenario between nation’s welfare policies and their own medical class assertions and claims, in the conceptual understanding of two different kind of authorities: the Political and the Medical one. (Show less)



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