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Regulators of an Internal Environment: British Naval Nursing in Late-Eighteenth Century Hospitals

Sat, April 2, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Westin Seattle Hotel, Whidbey

Abstract

Whether in the massive clinical hospitals of Haslar or Plymouth in England, or smaller institutions throughout the Atlantic World, eighteenth century British naval hospitals were heavily regulated spaces. Hospitals were a welcome on shore respite for sick and wounded sailors, and for those men who had been press-ganged into the Royal Navy they offered a chance to escape from their service. In order to prevent desertion, bars were installed on windows; hospitals were fenced in, while sentries patrolled both inside and out. Yet, these hospitals were principally a place of healing which meant that regulation extended beyond these prison-like measures to the internal environment of the hospital wards. Medical officers held that environmental factors influenced the constitution of their patients, and had the ability to either promote or hinder recovery. Stagnant, smelly air, would lead to the build up of deadly noxious effluvia, while fresh breezes and regular fumigation would result in rapid recovery.

However, it was not the surgeons and physicians who regulated the daily environment of the hospital. Instead this was the purview of the nurses; women who cleaned patient's bodies and bedding, opened and closed windows as necessary, and operated fumigation lamps on a regular schedule. This paper will contextualize the work of these women within an environmental, medical, and gendered labour framework. In examining the work of these women in West Indian naval hospitals it will also be possible to consider the influence of climate and tropical diseases. Understandings of tropical disease were reinforced by the use Black nurses in naval hospitals due to their supposed climatic immunity, while regulation of the interior environment was seen as even more critical in such torrid regions.

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