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Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz, eds. Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting. The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 352 pp. Ill. euro70.00 (978-9-0420-2599-8).
The editors of this volume on visits to medical institutions are to be commended for compiling a rich collection on what they rightly say is "an under-studied constituency in medical history" (p. 7). Based on two sessions at North American conferences, the book consists of an introduction and twelve case study chapters, which range chronologically from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century and include contributions from the United States, India and Ceylon, China, Australia, and New Zealand as well as Britain. The chapters are organized according to type of institution, beginning with general hospitals and moving on to specialist children's hospitals, isolation hospitals, lock hospitals, and mental asylums.
In their introduction, the editors attempt to impose order on this diversity by identifying four types of...