Hospital Facilities of the Mid-19th — Early 20th Centuries: Kirensky Hospital of Irkutsk Welfare Board

Abstract

By the middle of the 19th century departmental hospitals have gained a predominant position in the network of medical institutions in Russia. The introduction of strict regulation of the activities of public charity hospitals, uniform catalogs of medicines, limits on expenses for medicines and other attributes of hospital life make it possible, using the example of one hospital, in our case, the Kirensky Civil Hospital of the Irkutsk welfare board, to give an idea of the main directions of their “financial and economic activities”. As such, the study examined the maintenance of the hospital’s economic infrastructure and financial support for the care of patients. The study analyzed paperwork documentation, which made it possible for the first time to introduce data on the volume of food rationing for patients, to provide a description of hospital premises with detailed parameters and functional purposes. As a result of the study, the author concluded that the economic activities of administrative hospitals in the mid-19th — early 20th centuries was a priority direction (compared to medical activities) and included solving a wide range of problems, despite the fact that the costs of maintaining the hospital facilities fell entirely on the Irkutsk public charity, reflecting the main feature of “departmental medicine”.