Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/11054/946
Title: Microbes and madness: the Admissions Policy of the Ballarat Hospital - 1856 - 1914.
Authors: Hyslop, Anthea
Issue Date: 1987
Conference Name: Third National Conference on Medical History and Health in Australia: Reflections on Medical History and Health in Australia
Conference Date: November 23-25, 1986
Conference Place: Adelaide, South Australia
Abstract: This paper examines, not so much 'objects deserving of relief' in moral terms, but rather the exclusion of certain kinds of cases, on medical or quasi-medical grounds, from Ballarat's public general hospital. It chiefly dwells upon the hospital's early dealings with Chinese lepers, its prolonged opposition to the temporary housing of 'lunatics' en route to an asylum, and its varying views on the isolation of epidemic infectious diseases. The paper also considers, more briefly, other excluded categories - parturient women, children under five years of age, 'persons afflicted with syphilis', and those with 'chronic paralysis'. Its purpose is to analyse the prevailing understandings, confusions, or prejudices which governed the various exclusions, the interplay of professional and lay opinion thereon, and the reasons for certain changes of policy. (Dr Hyslop was Historian to the Ballarat Base Hospital, and Visitng Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne).
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11054/946
Internal ID Number: 00902
Health Subject: BALLARAT DISTRICT HOSPITAL
HOSPITAL HISTORY
INFECTION, HISTORY
MENTAL DISORDERS, HISTORY
PATIENT ADMISSION
Type: Conference
Paper
Appears in Collections:Historical Archive

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