Marginal and Obsolete? Rural Hospitals in Early Modern Europe: A Case Study of Catalonia

Abstract

Summary Small local hospitals have been neglected by historians, and frequently assumed to have been marginal to their communities and largely obsolete by the eighteenth century. This paper questions such assumptions via a case study of Catalonia. It provides the first comprehensive estimates for the number of hospitals over the course of the eighteenth century, and then examines a sample of surviving accounts and other documentation to analyse the extent and nature of care provided. While the quality of care varied and most hospitals were restricted by their income, particularly against a background of war and rising prices, many nevertheless provided considerable care both to transient populations of foundlings and migrants and to their local communities. The paper calls for a re-evaluation of these forms of care in line with the re-evaluation of women’s caring work.