Emily K. Abel, The Inevitable Hour

Emily K. Abel's The Inevitable Hour examines the care of the dying in the United States from 1868 to 1960. Abel argues that the late nineteenth century saw a change in the care of the dying in the USA. Prior to this period, death had been understood within a larger Christian worldview that considered it to be a regrettable, but inevitable component of life. As such, the care of the dying was considered essential to both familial and communal life; even as the very process of dying was a window into the way an individual had lived his or her life. Though the dying were still, at times, abused during this period, the omnipresence of death and predominance of Christian religious practices ensured that the dying remained vital members of their communities. The late nineteenth-century rise of medical authority challenged these communal practices of end-of-life care. Though the advent of German bacteriology made it possible to cure diseases that had previously proved fatal, this shift led to the exclusion of those patients who, even after the bacteriological revolution, remained at death's door. Such patients were considered medical failures that, in their inability to be cured, were wasting resources that might be better diverted to acute patients. They frequently received substandard care or were thrown out of medical facilities. Even when they were cared for, the newfound belief that disease was caused by microbiological organisms led medical professionals to exclude family members, whose presence had previously been considered salutary. The result was the marginalisation of the care of the dying in both medical care and communal life

Omnipresence · Theology · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · History · Philosophy