An Intimate Relationship: Medical Theory, The Environment, And Hospitals

Abstract

Prior to the full acceptance of bacteriology in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, medicine relied heavily upon the natural environment and cultivating flora from various regions around the world to implement in therapeutics. As a result of various medical theories and practices during the long nineteenth century the hospital became the physical embodiment of such practices and became modified as these medical theories advanced toward an acceptance of bacteriology. Initially serving as a marker for the boundary between the built and natural environments, hospitals also relied heavily upon the natural environment in the treatment of patients and became reflected, through much trial and error, in their design. As the acceptance of bacteriology (a.k.a. germ theory) proliferated and medicine became a laboratory science, a paradigm shift occurred in the design of hospitals and the use of the natural environment as a therapeutic fell out of favor. From the second quarter of the twentieth century on, hospitals no longer required the natural environment as part of their services to the sick and injured, became more integrated into the urban setting, and set out to manipulate, control, and artificially create environments within its own walls.