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The Perspective of Patients

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A History of Palliative Care, 1500-1970

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 123))

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Abstract

This relatively short chapter draws on the – unfortunately rather rare – personal testimonies of dying patients and of those who took care of them as well as on literary, fictional accounts, in order to throw some light and personal, subjective experience of suffering in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It stresses the importance of class and, more concretely of housing conditions for the experience of dying, at a time when most people still died at home. I hints at major features of the personal experience of dying, such as a sense of powerlessness and irritation. Last but not least, it traces the effects of an ongoing loss of religious certainties, which made the physical suffering of dying appear as all the more meaningless and which could also lead to considerable tensions and conflicts between patients and confessional caregivers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cf. Sontag, Illness (1978).

  2. 2.

    Florence Nightingale, Notes on nursing, London sine anno (orig.: 1859), p. 56.

  3. 3.

    Katharina von Faber-Castell, Arzt, Krankheit und Tod im erzählerischen Werk Theodor Fontanes, med. diss., Zürich: Juris-Druck 1983, p. 83.

  4. 4.

    Storm, Bekenntnis [1887] (1988), pp. 596–7.

  5. 5.

    Mann, Magic mountain (1929), p. 395; on Mann’s “antiromantic disillusionment” in the Magic mountain see Brigitta Schader, Schwindsucht. Zur Darstellung einer tödlichen Krankheit in der deutschen Literatur vom poetischen Realismus bis zur Moderne, Frankfurt: Lang 1987, pp. 127–50.

  6. 6.

    Mann, Magic mountain (1929), p. 396.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 546.

  8. 8.

    Krosigk, Umgang (1834), p. 106.

  9. 9.

    Vogel, Euthanasia (1834), p. 600; drawing on his extensive personal experience with pulmonary diseases, Stuertz made a similar statement (Nietner, Zur Tuberkulose-Bekämpfung (1913), pp. 33–53, here pp. 38–9).

  10. 10.

    Soutar, Diaries (1954), p. 198, September 9, 1943.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., p. 199, September 12, 1943.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 202, September 26, 1943.

  13. 13.

    Schnitzler, Sterben [1892] (1961), p. 175.

  14. 14.

    Roland Gerkan, Euthanasie, in: Das monistische Jahrhundert 2 (1913), pp. 169–74, cit. pp. 170–1.

  15. 15.

    Speech by Dr Liebe (Waldhof, Eigershausen) in: Nietner, Zur Tuberkulose-Bekämpfung (1912), pp. 37–41, here p. 38.

  16. 16.

    Johannes Handrick, Seelsorge und Politik in Heilstätten für tuberkulosekranke Männer, in: Die Tuberkulose 11 (1931), pp. 221–3.

  17. 17.

    Nolte, Wege (2006b), pp. 46–7; eadem, Pflege (2010b), pp. 98–9.

  18. 18.

    Halford, On the deaths (1842), pp. 163–6.

  19. 19.

    Harraden, Ships (1894), p. 83; on Harraden’s work see Pohland, Sanatorium (1984); I owe this passage to Katrin Max.

  20. 20.

    Haeberlin, Vom Beruf (1919), pp. 89–90.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., pp. 83–4.

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  1. Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Michael Stolberg

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Stolberg, M. (2017). The Perspective of Patients. In: A History of Palliative Care, 1500-1970. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 123. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54178-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54178-5_8

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