Learning to use their senses: Visitors to voluntary hospitals in eighteenth-century England

This article examines the way in which the senses were articulated in eighteenth-century hospital records. Touring these charities weekly, hospital governors assessed buildings using all of their senses in a way that was novel in this period. Examination of the minute books of the General Hospital in Birmingham tells us much about the way members of the eighteenth-century public experienced their world, established sensory hierarchies and refused to touch elements in their environment, among a number of other under-explored issues. Finally, it considers how historians might read for evidence of the senses in such contexts.