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Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital

Based on oral history interviews, medical literature, hospital newsletters, memoirs and news media, this article explores the ways in which ideals of socialism interacted with medical practice in polio care in 1950s Hungary. Through the everyday life of polio hospitals, it argues that the specific c...

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Main Author: Vargha, Dora
Format: Online Article Text
Language:English
Published: Oxford University Press 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018929/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29991853
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx064
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author Vargha, Dora
author_facet Vargha, Dora
author_sort Vargha, Dora
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description Based on oral history interviews, medical literature, hospital newsletters, memoirs and news media, this article explores the ways in which ideals of socialism interacted with medical practice in polio care in 1950s Hungary. Through the everyday life of polio hospitals, it argues that the specific care that polio demanded from hospital staff, parents and children, resonated with state socialist political discourses of gender equality and the breakdown of class barriers and conventional hierarchies in medicine. Providing opportunities, as much as failing to fulfil expectations of patients, parents and medical staff, polio care simultaneously created socialist utopias and demonstrated the limits of political ideals.
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spelling pubmed-60189292018-07-10 Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital Vargha, Dora Soc Hist Med Original Articles Based on oral history interviews, medical literature, hospital newsletters, memoirs and news media, this article explores the ways in which ideals of socialism interacted with medical practice in polio care in 1950s Hungary. Through the everyday life of polio hospitals, it argues that the specific care that polio demanded from hospital staff, parents and children, resonated with state socialist political discourses of gender equality and the breakdown of class barriers and conventional hierarchies in medicine. Providing opportunities, as much as failing to fulfil expectations of patients, parents and medical staff, polio care simultaneously created socialist utopias and demonstrated the limits of political ideals. Oxford University Press 2018-05 2017-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6018929/ /pubmed/29991853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx064 Text en © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Vargha, Dora
Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title_full Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title_fullStr Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title_full_unstemmed Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title_short Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital
title_sort socialist utopia in practice: everyday life and medical authority in a hungarian polio hospital
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018929/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29991853
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx064
work_keys_str_mv AT varghadora socialistutopiainpracticeeverydaylifeandmedicalauthorityinahungarianpoliohospital