Unseen Women – The Hospital of the Elisabethians in Vienna

Differences in medical research and practice between women and men have been widely recognized by professionals as well as the public over the past decades. Nevertheless, the systemic discrimination against women in medical practice remains an imminent problem. Understanding its historic roots has been considered an important step to overcome the misconceptions regarding female body that still lead to over-excessive morbidity and mortality amongst women when compared to men. Within the Habsburg Empire, hospitals dedicated exclusively to the care of women were first established by the Catholic Order of the Elisabethians, first in Graz in 1690, in Vienna in 1709 and later in several other major cities. This project investigates the skeletal remains of 380 patients who died at the Elisabethian hospital in Vienna in the 18 th century and were excavated in 2019 in combination with historical records detailing daily life at the hospital preserved in the archive of the Order. The skeletal remains will be analysed using bioarchaeological and biomolecular methods to investigate health, disease, diet and origin of the women who lived and died in 18th century Vienna. In addition, a wealth of historical sources on the hospital and its patients will be evaluated for the first time. By combining the historical, bioarchaeological and biomolecular research methods, the following research questions will be addressed in order to shed light on the early history of medical care for women: a) What were the life histories of those provided medical care at the Hospital of the Elisabethians? b) What was the role and significance of the Hospital of the Elisabethians in the development of modern institutional medical care in Vienna? c) How were/are medical care and nursing gendered, and what role did women`s health concerns play in the development of medical care in the 18th century? The project brings together historians based at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Habsburg and Balkans Studies (IHB) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), as well as archaeologists and bioarchaeologists from the Vienna-based commercial archaeology company Novetus GmbH, in order to analyse the wealth of archaeological, bioarchaeological and archival materials related to the Hospital of the Elisabethians. Employing an innovative digital approach all data collected within the framework of this project, a digital platform will be created by data scientists at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) at the ÖAW in order to collect, curate and ultimately present the results of the project to a wider public audience.