[The institutional care for incurable and dying patients in Bamberg around 1800]

Opened in 1789, the Bamberg General Hospital has often been described as a mile stone on the road from the traditional hospital into an institution for the exclusive care of curable diseases. As this paper shows, however, the shift was much less clear-cut. Early plans for the hospital also envisaged several rooms for dying patients within the new building, and later its first medical director, Adalbert F. Marcus, explicitly demanded that also some incurable patients be admitted and assisted until their death. His demand was not heeded but eventually plans for a separate institution came up. In 1803, a nearby former seminary was turned into a hospital for incurables. This paper traces these developments and puts them into their context.