New challenges, new institutions: hospitals in eighteenth-century Vilnius

• Academia.edu: straipsnio tekstas

ENThis article thus aims to examine the changes that occurred in the poor relief and health care structures of eighteenth-century Vilnius. The essay focuses primarily on two institutions, which were founded in the fi rst half of the eighteenth century ‒ the hospital of the Merciful Brothers of St Roch (Fratres Misericordiae sub titulo S. Rochi), also known as rochitae or rochici, and the hospital of the Sisters of Charity (Sorores Charitatis), or szarytki. It could be argued that these new hospitals not only represented a recently developed type of medical institution previously unknown in Vilnius, but also refl ected the then current tendencies in health care provision and the changing attitudes of the ecclesiastical elites towards social problems, the urban poor and the preservation of their health. The founding of these functionally distinct institutions, it is argued, also demonstrated the transformations in the local medical marketplace and the growing accessibility of health care among the lower strata of the urban society. [Extract, p. 136]