Medicine

Feeling blue

Colour and the modern British hospital

by Victoria Bates

Description

Feeling blue is the first book-length history of colour in modern hospitals. It examines colour in relation to six key themes - hygiene, emotion, humanisation, homeliness, play, consumerism - which are tied together by the idea of the 'modern' hospital. The book does not simply describe changes to the appearance of hospitals over time, but instead thinks expansively about the role of colour in shaping how hospitals felt. It uses colour to understand the layered meanings of modernity in twentieth-century Britain, and its relationship to the 'mundane' or everyday life of hospitals.

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Reviews

Feeling blue is the first historical study of colour in modern British hospitals. The book uses colour to understand the layered meanings of modernity in twentieth-century Britain and its relationship to the 'mundane' or everyday life of hospitals. Colour has long been a crucial part of hospital design and the daily activity of hospitals, from the uniforms that mark out different jobs, to the colour schemes that sort hospital waste. Despite this importance, the history of hospital colour is often overlooked as a subject of study. This book examines colour in relation to six key themes - hygiene, emotion, humanisation, homeliness, play and consumerism - which are tied together by the idea of the 'modern' hospital. Feeling blue opens important new understandings of a wide range of subjects including histories of emotions, health, politics, design, architecture, culture and society, and offers a new framework for thinking about 'modernity' and change over time.

Author Biography

Victoria Bates is Associate Professor in Modern Medical History at the University of Bristol

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Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press is a leading UK publisher known for excellent research in the humanities and social sciences.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date August 2025
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526168511 / 1526168510
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages328
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade; College/higher education; Professional and scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 X 138 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5745
  • SeriesSocial Histories of Medicine
  • Reference Code15169

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