Medicine and Magnificence, British Hospital and Asylum Architecture, 1660-1815

Christine Stevenson

ISBN 10: 0300085362 / ISBN 13: 9780300085365

Published by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000

About this Item

Signed by Author. This is the review copy owned by architectural historian Kerry Downes and contains a personal letter (signed Christine) from the author to Kerry Downes, thanking him for the review and discussing other matters. Loosely inserted are handwritten page-numbered notes on the back of scrap-paper for the review, along with a couple of small sketches, the matching pages have the relevant passages marked in pencil in the margins of the book. Clean dark covers with gilt lettering on the spine, sound binding, dark green end-papers. Contains black and white illustrations. No dust-jacket. Previous owner's name, architectural historian Kerry Downes, in pencil at the front. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: under 1 kg. Signed by Author. ISBN: 0300085362. ISBN/EAN: 9780300085365. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 25022101051. All our books are sent by tracked mail.

Seller Inventory # 25022101051

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Medicine and Magnificence, British Hospital and Asylum Architecture, 1660-1815
• Publisher: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Yale University Press, New Haven and London
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300085362
• ISBN 13: 9780300085365
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture

About this title

Synopsis

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries represent a golden age in the design and construction of hospitals and asylums for the insane. In Britain the great veterans’ hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich were erected, the ancient London hospitals completely reconstructed, and more than fifty other hospitals and asylums purpose-built by British charities or by the Navy. This book is the first devoted entirely to these fascinating buildings and to the wide contemporary interest that they aroused. In examining the planning and construction of English and Scottish hospitals in this period, architectural historian Christine Stevenson focuses on what these buildings meant--to architects, builders, donors, physicians, and the public--and how their meanings and functions changed.

Stevenson shows that hospital design was directed by medical theory and concerns to a greater degree than has been previously assumed. But this wide-ranging book is much more than a technical history. Blending social history with the details of construction, Stevenson introduces a large cast of players: voyeuristic women and dreaming engineers, military physicians who destroyed and Freemasons who built. In bringing to life those involved in designing and working in the institutions and those attacking them, too, she offers a new view of architectural, cultural and medical practice in the period as a whole.


Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

About the Author

Christine Stevenson is lecturer in the department of history of art at the University of Reading, England.