Abstracts fra Bibliotek for Læger 3/2003

 

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Sankt Josephs hospitalerne i Danmark 1875–1990. Et katolsk hospitalsimperiums etablering, lægevirksomhed og samspil med det offentlige.

Susanne Malchau:

The Saint Joseph Hospitals in Denmark 1875–1990.

A Catholic Empire of Hospitals: establishment, medical doctors and co-operation with authorities.

Bibl Læger 2003; 195: 135–75.

In Denmark the Reformation made Lutheranism the State religion, but with the Danish Constitution of 1849 came freedom of religion, which paved the way for the reestablishment of the Roman-Catholic Church in the country. The Sisters of Saint Joseph from Savoy were the first congregation to take up this opportunity. They arrived in 1856 and in 1875 they opened Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Copenhagen. During the following decades they established seven additional general hospitals, all located in the provinces. Thus they built up an empire of private Catholic hospitals in a Protestant society, a society which at the same time was developing into a welfare state which wished­ to take care of its own citizens in public hospitals. What happened when Catholic philanthropy came into contact with a Pro­testant welfare state? Was the result consensus or conflict? To answer these questions, this article focuses on the establishment, consolidation, and phasing out of the Saint Joseph’s hospitals in Danish society in the period 1875–1990, using three approaches: first, a statistical comparative investigation of the Saint Joseph’s hospitals and public hospitals; second, a study of the sisters managerial style and its influence on their co-operation with the medical doctors; and third, a study of Protestant Denmark’s reaction to the values of the Catholic hospitals. It concludes that the Saint Joseph’s hospitals made their greatest contributions between 1920 and 1940, when they had respectively 10 and 6 percent of the total number of hospital beds in the country. Furthermore, the sisters and the medical doctors employed at the hospitals came to agreement that the sisters was in charge of the leader­ship of the hospitals. This agreement made it possible for the medical doctors to introduce and practice medical specialisation at the Saint Joseph hospitals, and that was in contrast to the doctors’ possibilities in public hospitals. Eventually medical specialisation became the main characteristic at the Saint Joseph hospitals. Finally, both consensus and conflict in general characterized the relationship between Danish society and the Sisters of Saint Joseph. Consensus existed because both parties worked towards a well functioning health care system. Conflicts arose as a consequence of religious differences.

 

Erindringer fra Sct. Hans Hospital i Roskilde. Lægehustruer fortæller træk af livet på hospitalet som det formede sig i perioden 1950 til 1980.

Lilly Wiberg:

Memories from Sct. Hans Hospital in the period 1950 to 1980 told by doctors’ wives.

Bibl Læger 2003; 195: 176–202.

The article features sides of life at the psychiatric Sct. Hans Hospital in Roskilde in the period 1950 to 1980, such as it is recalled in interviews with five doctors’ wives, to whom the hospital created the frame­work not only for the medical deeds of their husbands, but also for their private family life. The period is epoch-making with the change in hospital treatment, enabled by general increase in social wealth and welfare and improved social legislation. The doctors’ wives have thus experienced both the asylum era with a huge number of patients and the modern treatment that aims at possible social reintegration.

Sct. Hans Hospital formed during the asylum period a veritable small community with a rather high level of self-sufficiency, mostly based on a wide staff of tradesmen and on the out- and indoor work, produced by the patients as part of the limited therapy, they could be offered. This economy of self-sufficiency made the administration able to offer the medical staff a number of advantages in their everyday life, such as getting lunch or dinner from the hospital-kitchen, delivered at their door by a patient, or buying staple commodities at very reason­able prices in a small shop, run by the institution. In both cases the charges were entered in a pass book and the amount deducted the ­salary of following month. Firewood sawed and cut by patients was freely delivered, and coal and coke ordered very cheaply at the admin­istration could be brought directly into the boiler rooms by patients. The gardens were carefully nursed by teams of patients, and the garden furnitures were fetched every autumn, repaired and painted ­during the winter, and replaced in the gardens at springtime. The pa­tients were of great help, if wanted, and there are several examples of closer connections to a patient, who found a refuge from the crowded department some hours a day in a doctor’s family and readily took on any odd work.

In return, but without any kind of pressure, it was much appreciated by the institution that the medical staff together with their partners and even children took part in a number of arrangements during the seasons and festivals to the amusement and recreation of the patients. This complex of advantages and duties contributed to a feeling of community, some would call it »esprit-de-corps«, which in the retrospect sets these years af the doctors’ wives’ lives in a very special light.

 

Lægeforeningens dilemma. Lægeforeningens forhandlinger om lægehjælp til tyske flygtninge i 1945.

Kirsten Lylloff:

The Dilemma of the Danish Medical Association. The Danish ­Medical Association’s discussions about medical aid to the German refugees in Denmark 1945.

Bibl Læger 2003; 195: 203–23.

In the last months of the Second World War 250,000 German re­fugees were sailed across the Baltic Sea to Denmark from the Eastern provinces of Germany. When the first major wave of refugees arrived to Denmark in the first days of March 1945, the German authorities in Denmark asked the Danish Medical Association for medical help to the refugees, who were in a very bad physical condition at arrival. At first the Danish Medical Association agreed to help refugees suffering from certain infectious diseases, typhoid and paratyphoid fever, ­dysentery and spotted fever, as well as women in labour and refugees requiring acute surgery. The requirement from the Danish Medical Association to the Germans for medical help to the refugees was a ­betterment of the conditions for the Danish prisoners in Germany and the return to Denmark of the 2,000 Danish policemen and ­gendarmes in German concentration camps.

This paper tells the story of the internal negotiations in the Danish Medical Association, which led to the refusal of the Danish doctors to treat German refugees. The negotiations ended before the majority of the refugees had arrived. Trying to improve the conditions for the Danish prisoners the chairman of the Danish Medical Association promised that the Danish doctors would treat the refugees in the ­cases mentioned above. But after five years of German occupation the ­Danish doctors didn’t want to treat Germans and they vigorously ­opposed the chairman, who tried to force them to treat the refugees. It resulted in a conflict in the Medical Association, in which the chairman stood practically alone against the rest of the members. The conflict ended as early as the 25th of March, when the Medical Asso­ciation decided that Danish doctors should treat only refugees with epidemic diseases threatening the Danish population. By trying to force the Danish doctors to treat the refugees, the chairman had ­pushed the rest of the doctors in a deadlock position, where they ­didn’t want to help the refugees in any way. The decision was taken at a time when only a small part of the refugees had arrived in Denmark. In the last six weeks of the war, a real humanitarian catastrophe involv­ing the refugees occurred. 200,000 additional refugees landed in Denmark, most of them in Copenhagen. 13,000 of them died in 1945, including 7,000 children under the age of five. But the Danish doctors stuck to their decision of the 25th of March and were not involved, with a very few exceptions, in direct medical care of the refugees.

 

Boganmeldelse: Wulff HR. Laegevidenskabens sprog – fra Hippokrates til vores tid.

Bengt I. Lindskog 

 

Forsidebillede: Dr.Wanscher undersøger et barn. Sankt Josephs Hospital,København 1956.