June 17th, 2008
Kirkbride’s Book Transcription Update
I have a confession to make: I still haven’t read all of Thomas Kirkbride’s book On the Construction and General Arrangement of Hospitals for the Insane. I know, it’s shameful but true. I have read a decent portion of it, but the text is just so utterly BORING. Kirkbride’s convoluted and archaic prose full of inverted sentence structures, superfluous commas, and needless repetition is bad enough, but the bulk of the content is pretty tiresome too. The lengthy discussions about fireproofing and number of “water-closets” required per ward really put me to sleep.
I somehow managed to slog through another ten chapters (51 through 60) and transcribe them for the site though. I know I said I wasn’t going to add to the transcription now that the book is available elsewhere, but I’ve changed my mind. There’s no other way I’m ever going to read the entire book, and having it available here as a resource just makes sense.
There are some interesting bits among the mountains of repetition and painful technical detail too. Something I found surprisingly interesting is a short statement about why Kirkbride’s own hospital building didn’t quite follow his prescription for a linear plan hospital.
This particular form of building was adopted, mainly because the tract of land on which it was to be placed, did not admit of the extent of structure required for the linear plan, originally proposed in the first edition of this book.
You can read this along with an almost painfully in-depth description of the hospital’s physical structure in Chapter LX.
There’ll be more added to the transcription in the future, although it may take a while. Oh yeah, one last thing: I added ten book plate pictures which you can see by clicking links in the text. I’m going to have to add the rest later. It’s hard to get the images scanned properly without ruining the physical book. It’ll take some time to get the rest scanned and maybe to improve the quality of what’s already there. I’ll try to get to that soon.
You’re fired.
What a relief!
Since you’ve been running this site without reading the book for some years perhaps you’d also consider publishing your own book on the subject as well…
without any words in it.
Sure. If people will buy it, why not?
That was a joke.
Though I suppose you may have to know what it is to hold a conversely overbearing quantity of written material and relatively few images, which would result in projects that are perpetually under development and rarely completed to fully enjoy the comic irony.
No, I got the joke. I was joking too.
Pictures are a dime a dozen nowadays. Good written material is hard to come by. I say don’t worry about any lack of pictures if that’s holding you back.
Amazing resource. Don’t give up. These buildings are a problematic treasure. What brought you to this interest? I have just begun to research the archetecture of kirckbride. I am involved in the preservation /Maintenance of one of these structures. I don’t always have the time to fully explore a web site butover the next few weeks will look closely at this one and the sources Just Great!
Barry: Thanks. I got interested in the subject after “discovering” the Danvers State Hospital Kirkbride years ago. I found that there were other hospitals around the country with similar buildings, and this project just grew from there.
Which Kirkbride are you involved with preserving/maintaining?