Making Noise in the Modern Hospital (Elements in Histories of Emotions and the Senses)

By: Victoria Bates

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Synopsis: This Element examines the problem of hospital noise, a problem that has repeatedly been discovered anew, with each new era bringing its own efforts to control and abate unwanted sound in healthcare settings. Why, then, has hospital noise never been resolved? This question is at the heart of Making Noise in the Modern Hospital, which brings together histories of the senses, space, technology, society, medicine and architecture to understand the changing cacophony of the late twentieth-century hospital. This Element is fundamentally interdisciplinary – despite being historical, it comes up to the present day and brings in scholarship on space, place, atmosphere and the senses that will have relevance to scholars working outside of historical research. The intersection between medical and sensory histories also puts interdisciplinary research at the Element's core.