Lernen am Bett der Kranken. Die frühen Universitätskliniken in Deutschland (1760–1840)

The orders' medical and organizational skills were complemented by the effective efforts of hospital directors in finding additional sources of funding. Slowly it was more generally recognized that the plans to transfer funds to large city institutions were misguided, and that local provision was positively desirable. Daniel Hickey concludes that, as charitable giving increased in the eighteenth century, many of these small establishments were providing a good service, better than some other historians of poverty have claimed. Indeed they might be using more advanced surgical techniques and recording lower mortality rates than famous Parisian hospitals. Whereas most histories of hospitals have concentrated on the larger institutions, this new study reveals that there was an equally important lower stratum of medicine and charity. As well as challenging some of the accepted generalizations about poverty in ancien regime France, Daniel Hickey provides many insights into the social attitudes and tensions which affected daily life in small towns and villages.