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This essay tries to show that, in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic, Protestant hospitals were built not only to relieve the suffering of the population, but also out of a sense of inferiority to a reinvigorated Catholicism. Hospitals were consequently not only places of care and healing but also of denominational self-assertion. Based on Olaf Blaschke's thesis of a "second denominational age," this contribution tries to demonstrate that the responsible Protestant agents did not make anti-Catholic proclamations at every occasion and in all the media. The founders of the "Protestant Hospital Building Association," which this essay investigates, made deliberate use of anti-Catholic resentment, expressing it boldly when approaching the Protestant elites, while playing it down deliberately when addressing the people of Berlin. With a view to the severe economic crisis and mass unemployment prevailing from 1930, they justified the building of new hospitals with the need to create work places, without making recourse to the denomination argument. The political situation, the addressees and the hope for economic success seem to have informed the representation of denominational resentments decisively. Confessionalism therefore seemed to have been not as much a question of ideology as one of strategy.

The juxtaposition of official regulations and letters of complaint from Vienna's Rothschild Hospital shows, beyond the rhetoric and euphemisms of hospital reports, how lively and diverse day-to-day life was in a Jewish hospital around the year 1900. The letters of complaint query the official hospital rules and show that ideal and reality did not always coincide. Often, religious questions were at the root of the critique--such as doubts as to whether kosher dietary laws were adhered to--or conflicts between the agents involved, be they individuals or groups, patients, nurses, physicians or administrative staff. As part of this process, power structures, social hierarchies, patient rights and gender issues were called into question and renegotiated.

Institutional families were widespread in the 20th century. As there is very little empirical material on the function of the housemother, a qualitative study was launched to explore members' memories of the function of the housemother between 1945 and 1995 and how communal life in the institutional families of the period was possible. The study was methodologically oriented towards oral history techniques and the principles of Grounded Theory as well as towards sequential line by line analysis. For the purposes of this article, the interviews with nine housemothers were selected from the interviews conducted for the wider study (n=42). The central question concerned how housemothers experienced professional developments in retrospect and the influence these had on the function of the housemother. The interviews resulted in the definition of three phases which the housemothers passed through during their role as housemother. This article describes the third phase: "Leaving the function of the housemother - lost and frustrated power and dominance". Housemothers were not only housekeepers but also carers. Together with the husbands, they represented the heads of their institutional families. Housemothers found living in one house with the other members of the "family" a burden, but at the same time they benefitted from the great freedom they had. This aspect is described using the core categories of power and dominance.

The development of nursing is analysed from the perspective of its situation in Germany today, and the requirements expected for the next years to come. It becomes apparent that nursing as a profession regulated by the state is a young profession, just some one hundred years old. During the 19th century nursing in Germany was mostly performed by sisterhoods bound to the church and organised as collectives. But it was stimulated and challenged by the development from a philosophically oriented library medicine to a scientifically oriented hospital medicine. Thus its transformation into a profession regulated by the state ended for the time being in 1906. Nursing sisterhoods in Germany were modelled for the French Daughters of Charity that had been planted in 1633 by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in Paris. Models for this planting are pointed to.

The contribution follows an architectural perspective on the history of hospitals that are conceptualised as locations of Christian charity. It goes into the German, Italian, and especially into the French developments, and it identifies three types of hospitals in 18th century: That of Christian charity, the military lazaretto, and the new prototypes of modem clinics. Furthermore three technical types are identified, according to the ventilation of the ,machines a guérir' (Tenon): the partial system, the central system, and the technical system.

The debate about the organisation of nursing became acute during the last decades of the 19th century when big modern Jewish hospitals were built in several cities of the Habsburg Monarchy. This led to an increase in the demand for nurses and to the initiation of a discussion about the professionalisation of Jewish nursing. In these debates different actors with different intentions were involved. While hospitals were looking mainly for inexpensive and unlimited working nurses, middle-class organisations such as B'nai B'rith emphasised the necessity for women to learn a useful profession to be able to support their husbands economically. Furthermore, feminists and women's associations tried to set new standards for female education, emphasising economic independence and improving the working conditions for women. Jewish feminists such as Henriette Weiss in Vienna, Ida Fuerst in Budapest, and Julie Leipen in Prague tried to build up Jewish nursing schools. The different strategies of implementations and the result of their efforts will be the main focus of this paper.

In historical research on late 19th-century Germany, in general, as well as in the historiography of medicine, the General Hospital is typically described as located in industrial towns and cities. In order to complement this picture this paper discusses the foundation (in 1888) and the early years of the "Fronberg-Hospital" of the Deaconry Motherhouse Kaiserswerth. The small town of Kaiserswerth, with nearly 2500 inhabitants around 1900, was located midway between the two industrial towns of Duisburg and Düsseldorf. My historical analysis extends to the background of this situation, the beginnings of social insurance, including health insurance, and the eminent significance of denominational quarrels in the history of Imperial Germany up to the First World War.

The article deals with the history of the Hospital of the Brothers of St. John of God (in German: "Barmherzige Brüder"; official name "Ordo Hospitalarius Sancti Joannis a Deo") in the capital of Upper Austria, Linz, from its founding in 1757 to c. 1780. Primarily, the organisational development and the patients of the institute are discussed. The order's hospital already functioned as a medical hospital for the treatment of acute diseases: It was oriented towards the reestablishment of health of its inmates during short time and offered treatment by a staff of learned medical experts, among them academically trained physicians. The accommodation of the patients yet took place in a largely undifferentiated manner, as most of them were situated in a large common hall. This was obviously a consequence of the comparatively little capacity of the organisation, too, which sustained about 12 beds in the beginning, and about 20 around 1780. Nonetheless, the number of patients treated there summed up to nearly 1% of the entire male population of Upper Austria even during the first decade of its existence. In early modern time, only men were admitted to this hospital, the average age of them being only ca. 30 years. As far as social status is concerned, most of them (according to a representative sample out of the admissions of 1757-1767) were handicraftsmen (more than two thirds), labourers and servants. Thus, the organisation was obviously destined to broad social strata, but by no way displays itself as a poorhouse. Average annual mortality was 10 to 13%, which is comparable to that of other hospitals of the order in 18th century Austria. Most of the admitted persons suffered from "fever" or inner diseases and were dismissed as healed already after some weeks of stay.

In the 1940s there occurred an ethical conflict in the Women's Hospital of Basle. It arose in the context of a shortage of nurses, the introduction of the Swiss national criminal law, the change of the hospital director, the increase of abortion and the nursing ideal of obedience and serving. The conflict showed the social change towards measures of birth control such as abortion and sterilisation. Different political opinions and strong convictions clashed. The paper is focusing on denominationally affiliated nurses, the deaconesses of Riehen, who were standing between the religious conviction to protect unborn life and the professional principle of unconditional nursing. Finally they decided to leave the hospital.

The growth of the city's population, rapid advances in medical science, the increasing understanding of the importance of hygiene and, finally, the demand for health care led to the erection of a modern 353-bed municipal hospital complex at Pommerensdorf, Apfelallee, which was officially opened in 1879. From the very beginning of its existence, the municipal hospital was constantly in the process of extension and rebuilding. A hospital base was set up and new departments and clinics were opened. In 1937, the number of the hospital beds had increased to 1,004. The official existence of an independent urology department with 30 beds, first headed by Dr. Felix Hagen (1880-1962), dates back to March 1919. The aim of this new department was to carry out examinations and differential diagnoses, together with the department of internal medicine, for those patients from the urological surgery sector including evaluation for surgery. Surgical urology was the responsibility of the surgery department. The remaining cases requiring urological experience, such as those involving transurethral intervention, diseases of the bladder and urinary tract infection, were treated in the new urology department. As an auxiliary department, de facto dependent on the departments of surgery and internal medicine, urology could not develop properly and survive. In October 1935, the position of the head of the urological department was terminated, and urology was incorporated into the department of surgery. During the Second World War, between 1939 and 1945, as during the World War 1, a field hospital was set up in the municipal hospital at Pommerensdorf in Stettin.

Knights Hospitallers of St. John arrived in Silesia from Bohemia and Moravia in the 70s of the 12th century, and created 15 posts there. Although Silesia commanderies were the biggest center of the Order of the Hospital in the Polish territories, they were not a separate province but belonged to the Bohemian priorate. An attempt to organize a Polish priorate with a seat in Silesia in the mid-13th century was a failure. The commanderies which had come into being by the middle of the 13th century were established thanks to grants of land estates by Silesian magnates, who in this way supported the struggle with the muslims in the Holy Land. In the middle of the 13th century, as a result of the decline of the crusade movement, rural commanderies began to lose their significance and some of them disappeared. The intensive process of the foundation of towns on the basis of German law in Slilesia in the 13th and 14th centuries opened new possibilities for the order. In urban parishes Knights Hopsitallers of St. John began to organize commanderies composed of ca 10 brethren who ministered to a parish. The undertaking of this new task showed the Silesian Knights Hospitallers' adaption skills and made it possible for them to not only survive but to develop in the late Middle Ages.

The brotherhood of St. Anthony, founded in the old French province of Dauphiné in 1095, was elevated to the rank of a monastic order in 1227, complying with the rules of the Augustinian Canons. In their infirmaries the monks took care of the persons attacked by ergot poisoning. If prayers and ointments were of no avail, in most cases the lower leg was amputated, so that the vital organs were not affected by gangrene. After bad harvests this ergotism became an epidemy, as rye-flour was consumed which had been contaminated by the fungus claviceps purpurea. It was as late as the 17th and 18th centuries that the connection between ergot poisoning and the disease of ignis sacer was correctly recognized. As in the Würzburg area there were mainly cultivated wheat and barley which as selfpollinating cereals were secure against the fungus, it was in 1434 only that an Anthony monastery was founded. But its financial breakdown came as early as in 1527, as the donations of money and groceries had been declining and a provisor had stolen valuables. Henceforward the lepers were accommodated in the three municipal hospitals for the incurables.

If one looks for medical knowledge in medieval monasteries ("Klostermedizin"), the name of Hildegard of Bingen immediately comes to mind. However, it is rarely considered that medieval nunneries had very different social conditions compared to those of their male counterparts: they had different rules, stricter enclosure and fewer opportunities for education. Therefore we cannot assume that medicine had the same significance in women's as in men's monasteries. A look at the libraries and surviving manuscript collections of nunneries shows that there was very little interest in medical topics. An examination of the few known sources on medically active nuns reveals similar problems. Although some communities supported their own hospitals, the nuns did not generally nurse the ill and poor themselves. This holds also true, in general, for beguines and sisters of the hospitallers. Most of the monasteries had an infirmary for sick and aged sisters of their own communities, but in serious cases a male doctors was usually called. In sum, there is little evidence that medieval nuns were occupied with medical studies. Hildegard of Bingen has to be regarded as an exception.

In 1919, Michael Fischer OSC was appointed to the German charity union "Zentrale des Deutschen Caritasverbandes" (DCV) in Freiburg. He assumed his duties as the acting manager and general secretary for the German catholic union of health institutions "Verband Katholischer Kranken- und Pflegeanstalten". For nearly twenty years, he was involved in expanding and strengthening this specialized organisation. For more than a decade, Michael Fischer influenced catholic medical care in Germany by holding lectures; on the whole, he published the medical welfare journal "Krankendienst" as well as fifteen specialized books and more than five hundred articles in different journals, which were essential. For all his efforts, his enormous engagement, historical health research has ignored him until now. The following essay is meant to give insight into his life and works and pays tribute to his importance in nursing care.

On 1 October 1997 Ocean Road Hospital in Daressalam commemorated one hundred years of its existence. As early as 1888 a provisional hospital had been set up in Zanzibar by the German Lutheran Church to serve the needs of the Germans living and working on the East African coast. But when the British established their protectorate over Zanzibar in 1890, the hospital was moved to Dar es Salaam. As cooperation between Mission hospital and Government authorities proved difficult, the German colonial administration was determined to build an hospital of its own. Lack of funds delayed the construction of the building which had to be built on a more modest scale than originally planned. But when the hospital was inaugurated in October 1897, people were impressed both by its functional usefulness and aesthetic attraction. The history of the German Government Hospital reflects the political context of the time as well as the progress of medicine in combatting endemic diseases. While patients were often segregated by race--the Government Hospital in Daressalam almost exclusively reserved for Europeans--all were benefitting from the results of medical science. For Robert Koch the hospital (and its laboratory) served as basis for his research in the field of malaria, black water fever, sleeping sickness, and relapsing fever. It was from Africa that the embarked on his journey to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in December 1905. During the First World War Ocean Road Hospital, as it was called from now on, was taken over by the British. Since independence, the Tanzanians are in charge. It is presently the only tumor hospital of the country, closely cooperating with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. Restoration of Ocean Road Hospital, completed at the beginning of this year, was made possible by a grant of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Based on hitherto unknown layouts and documents from the Prague archives, this paper reviews the evolution of the health care system in the capital of Bohemia. From the high Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, the town's history as well as changing political and religious tendencies provide a unique background for the development of different types of institutions for the care of the poor and sick. The first charitable foundations of the sovereigns and the archbishops were soon followed by the semi-monasterial infirmaries of the Hospitallers. Leprosoria and other shelters for the contagious deserve special attention. After the counter-reformation, the newly built hospitals of orders like the Brothers of Saint John of God and the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth played an important role. From the architectural point of view, the baroque hospitals built by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer belong to the most impressive examples of hospital architecture in Europe. Finally, the medical reforms of Emperor Joseph II. led to a series of completely new institutions, which can be regarded as the beginning of modern medicine im Bohemia. It was especially intended to describe exactly the site and the architectonic appearance of the preserved buildings. Thus, the medical historian can contribute to the care and preservation of these medical monuments.