ABSTRACT
When the Red Cross opened its new convalescent home at Russell Lea in Sydney in 1919, it contained a coloured room designed for treating 'nerve cases'. This room was painted by Roy de Maistre, a young artist, and was modelled on the Kemp Prossor colour scheme trialled at the McCaul Convalescent Hospital in London for the treatment of shell shock. Dubbed the 'colour cure' by the popular press, this unconventional treatment was ignored by the Australian medical profession. The story of de Maistre's colour experiment is not widely known outside the specialist field of Australian art history. Focusing on the colour room as a point of convergence between art and medicine in the context of the First World War, this article investigates Red Cross activities and the care of soldiers suffering from nervous conditions.
Subject(s)
Art Therapy/history , Combat Disorders/history , Hospitals, Convalescent/history , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Red Cross/history , World War I , Australia , Color , Combat Disorders/therapy , Famous Persons , History, 20th Century , Humans , Military Medicine/history , Military Personnel/historyABSTRACT
Phil Wade, director of Marketing at Static Systems Group, looks back at how bedhead services and trunking have developed over the past 40 years. Their development has, he says, been driven not only by increasingly stringent infection control criteria, the need for more attractive aesthetics, increased functionality, evolving communications technology, and the ability to adapt to meet changing needs, but equally by the growing part that clinicians and healthcare planners now play in the decision-making process for bedside layouts. He also looks forward to what we might expect to see in the future.
Subject(s)
Equipment and Supplies, Hospital/history , Materials Management, Hospital/history , Equipment and Supplies, Hospital/trends , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Materials Management, Hospital/trends , United KingdomABSTRACT
The institutional revolution has become a major landmark of late-nineteenth century science, marking the rapid construction of large, institutional laboratories which transformed scientific training and practice. Although it has served historians of physics well, the institutional revolution has proved much more contentious in the case of chemistry. I use published sources, mainly written by chemists and largely focused on laboratories built in German-speaking lands between about 1865 and 1900, to show that chemical laboratory design was inextricably linked to productive practice, large-scale pedagogy and disciplinary management. I argue that effective management of the novel risks inherent in teaching and doing organic synthesis was significant in driving and shaping the construction of late-nineteenth century institutional chemical laboratories, and that these laboratories were essential to the disciplinary development of chemistry. Seen in this way, the laboratory necessarily becomes part of the material culture of late-nineteenth century chemistry, and I show how this view leads not only to a revision of what is usually known as the laboratory revolution in chemistry but also to a new interpretation of the institutional revolution in physics.
Subject(s)
Chemistry/history , Floors and Floorcoverings/history , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Laboratories/history , Laboratory Chemicals/history , Workplace/history , Chemical Engineering/history , Germany , History, 19th Century , Humans , Physicians/history , Universities/historyABSTRACT
This article investigates the reciprocal influence of Ottoman Turkish and American interiors in the development of seating furniture. Seating furniture is unique because it involves a direct and physical interaction between the piece of furniture and the body, while at the same time it is part of a public space where social interactions occur. I will argue that the interactions between the Ottoman Turks and Americans are reflected in the way these traditions modified their seating furniture as they sought to mediate cultural, political and social differences between them. The concept of bodily comfort will serve as a common thread in understanding the origin of the expression "American style" (Amerikan stili or Amerikan tarzi) in modern Turkish language, the "Turkish chairs" in Victorian America in the late nineteenth century and the English language use of words such as sofa, ottoman and divan.
Subject(s)
Cross-Cultural Comparison , Household Articles , Human Body , Interior Design and Furnishings , Body Image , Cultural Diversity , Ethnicity/education , Ethnicity/ethnology , Ethnicity/history , Ethnicity/legislation & jurisprudence , Ethnicity/psychology , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Household Articles/economics , Household Articles/history , Humans , Interior Design and Furnishings/economics , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Language/history , Ottoman Empire/ethnology , Turkey/ethnology , United States/ethnologySubject(s)
Hospital Design and Construction/history , Hospitals, Public/history , Museums/history , Art/history , France , History, 17th Century , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Religion/historyABSTRACT
This article examines the advent of twin beds as a common sleeping arrangement for English couples. Through an analysis of a range of sources from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries - marketing materials, advertisements, domestic, decorative and marital advice books and novels and films - it argues that while twin beds were initially recommended by proponents of the domestic sanitation movement as part of a raft of hygiene measures, by the 1920s they had become a fashionable item of bedroom furniture for modern couples in "companionate" marriages. It was in this context that Marie Stopes, in her popular marital advice books, railed against them as an "invention of the devil", symptomatic of the evils of modernity, and endangering the happiness of the modern married couple. The article concludes that, despite these changing contexts of consumption, the significance of the history of twin beds needs to be understood through the intersecting discourses of domesticity, health and sexuality.
Subject(s)
Beds , Hygiene , Marriage , Sexuality , Social Change , Advertising/economics , Advertising/history , Beds/history , Cultural Characteristics , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Hygiene/education , Hygiene/history , Interior Design and Furnishings/history , Marriage/ethnology , Marriage/history , Marriage/legislation & jurisprudence , Marriage/psychology , Men's Health/ethnology , Men's Health/history , Sexuality/ethnology , Sexuality/history , Sexuality/physiology , Sexuality/psychology , Social Change/history , Spouses/education , Spouses/ethnology , Spouses/history , Spouses/legislation & jurisprudence , Spouses/psychology , United Kingdom/ethnology , Women's Health/ethnology , Women's Health/historyABSTRACT
This paper reflects on the life and work of Esme Hadfield, an otolaryngologist based at Wycombe General Hospital and, in particular, on her discovery of the link between adenocarcinoma of the paranasal sinuses and wood dust exposure from those in the furniture industry. The paper also explores the woodworking industry that forms the backdrop to her discovery.