The Place to Heal and the Place to Die. Patients and Causes of Death in Nineteenth-Century Venice

Abstract

Summary We used death records to highlight the main features of mid-nineteenth-century Venetian hospitals. At that time, the medicalisation of hospitals was well under way. The Civic Hospital, in particular, had up to 1,400 beds, a large medical staff and a rational structure. By contrasting hospital deaths with deaths occurring at home, we asked whether the patterns seen reflect the modernisation of the hospital system. On one hand, those admitted to hospital were mostly poor, elderly, immigrants, with little support at home, suggesting that social rather than medical conditions determined hospitalisation. On the other hand, there were differences in the causes of death, implying that the hospital pursued some therapeutic specialisation, which attracted also patients of better social standing. Notwithstanding the deep transformation that took place in the nineteenth century, the Venetian experience confirms the coexistence and interdependency of care and cure as permanent features of hospital history.