The Opening of the Roper Hospital in Antebellum Charleston, South Carolina

본 연구는 1854년 미국 사우스캐롤라이나주 찰스턴시의 로퍼병원(Roper Hospital)의 개원을 둘러싼 이야기를 고찰한다. 기존 연구에서는 로퍼 병원에 대해서는 제도사적(institutional study) 관점에서만 연구하였었다. 본 연구에서는 수기로 기록한 병원 이사회의 회의록 2권(1845-1855, 1856-1868)과 사우스캐롤라이나의 주 의학 잡지인 Charleston Medical Journal and Review를 면밀히 분석한다. 이 분석을 통해서 병원 건물의 성립과 구조, 병원 운영, 그리고 병원의 개원과 운영의 핵심적인 역할을 했던 의료계(Medical Profession)를 고찰한다. 그동안 잘 알려지지 않았던 로퍼 병원의 개원을 둘러싼 논의를 통해 미국 의사들이 자신들만의 공고한 전문가 직업 체제를 구축하려는 모습을 고찰할 것이다. 이러한 점에서 이 연구는 미국 병원사, 의료사 연구에 기여할 것이다.

This study highlights the opening of the Roper Hospital in Antebellum Charleston, South Carolina, for what it reveals about the nature of the nineteenth hospital system, especially in relation to the medical profession and education. Relying primarily on minutes from the hospital board of trustees and the Charleston Medical Journal and Review, I examine how health car was predominantly built upon the orthodox medical profession, and institutionalized within the hospital walls. It also reveals that how health care was predominantly built upon the orthodox medical profession, and institutionalized within the hospital walls. Erected at the bequest of Charleston philanthropist Colonel Thomas Roper, the Roper Hospital admitted its first local patients in 1856. The establishment of the Roper Hospital as a form of institutionalized medical care and an integral part of medical education well illuminates the transformation of medicine in the mid-nineteenth century. The Roper Hospital was initiated and operated exclusively by the medical profession with the aid of public and private funding, but it functioned as a public institution. Supporting the hospital’s arrangement with the medical school for the clinical lectures for the improvement of medical education, it was also evident that the Roper Hospital galvanized many Charleston medical practitioners; it was considered the best and largest place for “desirable” clinical instruction in Charleston. The Roper Hospital wards, full of the sick poor, served as a medical laboratory as well as a place for curing the sick, and the hospital functioned as a meeting venue for the orthodox medical profession in South Carolina, both the hospital trustees and numerous other medical societies such as the South Carolina Medical Association. In sum, from the beginning of the hospital planning, the Roper Hospital was an embodiment of the aspirations of the Charleston and South Carolina medical circle.