Technology in the Hospital CH 1&2

The first chapter of this book read like an abstract of a scientific paper; it was mostly concerned with outlining what the book would explore.  The author also used a fair amount of graphical data in making his points.  Most of them showed how hospital use and organization trended from 1900 to 1925.  In relation to graphs, one of the authors main topics in the second chapter was the evolution of record keeping in the hospital.  This became more efficient with standardized forms and typing and calculation machines.  These improvements were vital in the wake of Americans transitioning from home-care to hospital care, which we were introduced to in Marrow of Tragedy.
With this increased use, I was surprised at how the hospitals image changed as paying middle to upper class people began frequenting the hospitals.  It seems this was what spurred the money centered system of healthcare we still see today.  With this business-oriented hospital it was also surprising to see the heightened importance of administrators.  This translated in the latter part of Ch.2 in the description of the "efficiency craze", where people began to use quick and efficient business practices to allow for quicker surgeries so the hospital could have more vacant beds resulting in more money.