This collection of ten essays by leading scholars in the social history of medicine provides a window into the world of the hospital, exploring the increasing complexity of both its internal and external dynamics as well as the relationship between the two. An introductory essay describes and evaluates the shifting balance between the hospital's moral and medical purposes, tracing the social, technical, physical, and medical developments that have continually shaped the image and activities of the general hospital from 1800 to the 1980s. Part One of the book places American general hospitals in the larger context of their regional, ethnic, religious, and racial communities. It contains four essays, including two case studies of local hospitals-one urban, the other rural-in transition, a photographic essay of life in community hospitals, and an account of the attempt to move black hospitals into the mainstream during the years 1920 to 1945. Part Two focuses on the professional communities within the hospital, Four essays explore the impact of technology on the modern hospital, science and the nursing profession, the changing education of hospital administrators, and the coming of age, in the 1960s, of the first hospital workers' union. A concluding article addresses crucial public policy issues and consider s prospects for the future of the American general hospital.