Female Sanitary Assistance in the end of the Ancient Régime: The Hospital of "Caridad y Refugio" in Granada

Abstract

The city of Granada equipped itself with an important hospital network in order to take care of its population’s assistance needs. Said network was maintained throughout the entire Modern Ages in spite Felipe II’s attempts at reducing the number of hospitals and the creation of the Hospicio General in 1753. This article analyzes the sanitary assistance provided in a women’s hospital under the Brotherhood of Caridad y Refugio. A quantitative study of the assistance provided during the second half of the eighteenth century is performed using documents from its ample archive, and including aspects as interesting as the admission of the sick, their geographical and social origins, ages, marital status, number of children, the mortality rate in the hospital, and the main illnesses that caused hospitalizations. This work’s results nuance several topical affirmations about the overall lack of quality of sanitary assistance in the Ancien Régime.