November 7, 2025
The Matter of Hospitals
This book invites readers to discover never-before-told stories of hospitals through an unusual assortment of materials, offering a unique and timely glimpse into one of society’s most feared, essential, and sensorially rich institutions. Hospitals, with their distinctive smells, acute pain, births, writhing bodies, incessant beeping, endless waiting, cardboard food and never-ending corridors, have fascinated writers for centuries. Edited by the prize-winning author of A Sensory Education and Making Sense of Medicine, this book shares a never-before-told story of hospitals through an unusual collection of objects. A great deal that matters happens in hospitals – from new life to the end of life. There is also a great deal of matter, in its material form, within hospitals. Sometimes there is too much: when we see the mountains of clinical waste with dirty syringes and used gloves. Sometimes there is too little: when we saw empty pharmacy shelves during the pandemic. More often, matter circulates in ways that are taken for granted, invisible yet critical to how hospitals function. Each essay in this book takes the matter of hospitals as a starting point to explore broader themes. Organised alphabetically, The Matter of Hospitals investigates what we can learn from the institution’s materiality about creativity, waste, patient care, community, attention and design. From ‘A’ for atmosphere to ‘Z’ for zips, each essay is a close sensory study of what seem, on the surface, to be mundane things. Beautifully illustrated with artistic photographs and hand-drawn illustrations by the editor, The Matter of Hospitals offers an inspiring and unique examination of the stuff that so many of us take for granted, in a place that we never do.