"An architectural historian, Christine Stevenson looks beyond the intrinsic value of hospital design to consider what the buildings meant to architects, builders, donors, physicians and the public, and how these meanings and functions changed. Blending social history with the details of construction, she explores views of the appropriateness of architectural display in buildings for paupers and invalids, the importance of the circulation of air for the prevention of cross-infection, the preoccupation with segregation by sex, class and diagnosis, and the provision of such 'true magnificence' as facilities for exercise. In the final analysis, Stevenson argues, hospital planning attempted to reconcile man's works with that of God. By bringing to life those involved in designing and working the institutions and those attacking them too, she offers a view of architectural, cultural and medical practice in the period as a whole."--BOOK JACKET.