Hospital

A splendid photographic essay with an international perspective, Hospital ranges across national boundaries to record the realities and issues behind the scenes of one of the world's essential institutions, the modern hospital. In a time when adequate health care has become one of the most important necessities in most countries, the hospital represents a great tributary of expertise and compassion. It is an institution governed by the science and art of its medical care, yet it reflects the socioeconomic and cultural pressures peculiar to its setting. With a deft eye for the telling situation, Stephen Feldman has chronicled the life and lives of patients and staff at hospitals throughout the world in almost 150 superb black-and-white pictures. Karine Douplitzky supplies the accompanying text. Hospital reveals a meeting place where professionals and the public intersect, a place of dialogue between physicians and their patients, where people's needs and a nation's demands are brought into singular focus. The book suggests a tension between the way in which Western medicine is idealized and the way it is applied-which often depends upon what a particular culture chooses to understand as "good" medicine. What, Hospital asks, becomes of the exported model of Western medical care after it has passed through the filter of a national or regional sensibility? These stunning photographs and discerning text offer surprising answers.