Howell Chapters 1-2

Technology in the hospital changed very quickly over a relatively short period of time between 1900 and 1925. In 1900, hospital care was not as efficient as it could have been. Tests were taken, but whenever possible, doctors relied on sight or their own knowledge to diagnose the symptoms and give out treatment. The tests that were taken were hardly even looked at, and long hospital stays might only take up one page of the record books of the hospitals. By 1925, however, things had changed. X-rays were used to take images of the body, and then used to confirm diagnoses. Doctors took much better records, and prided themselves in keeping a clean, tidy, well-furnished hospital setting. Blood tests were also an important part of the diagnoses, and doctors frequently referred back to them during treatment. Some people might say the hospital, by 1925, had become more scientific. Machines were relied on more heavily, and doctors and patients alike wanted to know and understand more about what kinds of illnesses they were suffering from and what caused them. The new technology both doctors and patients were experiencing in the hospital is a very important part of the upward use of technology at that time, which helped lead to more discoveries and made hospitals more about science than ever before. In other words, hospitals started to become a central part in medical education. This new technology often bewildered a patient who had never experienced these things before, and they must have been uncomfortable at first when their blood was taken for tests for the first time. As the technology became increasingly more advanced and people began to realize that it was alright to go to a hospital, the hospitals were faced with a management crisis. They fixed this by changing every part of their organization from the bottom up, thereby making it a lot more efficient in providing health care. Technology was the main cause of the rise of the hospital in the average American's life, and it continues to be an important aspect of the modern-day hospital as well.