Abstract

MIRALLES SANGRO, Mª Teresa  and  DURAN ESCRIBANO, Marta. Hospital fire: Analysis as described by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. Index Enferm [online]. 2009, vol.18, n.4, pp.276-280. ISSN 1699-5988.

The paper analyzes the context of a dramatic and tragic event that occurs in the year 1778, when a huge fire destroyed the Comedy Theater Hospital in Nuestra Señora de Gracia Hospital, Zaragoza. The event describes the Aragonese painter Francisco Jose de Goya and Luciente in 1808, in the play known as ‘a hospital fire'. This is a descriptive and interpretive study originating from the works of Goya and we related to the history of nursing. Through this representation, our first objective is to assess the presence of nursing in this context and then connect the role of the hospitalised people with their carers in the hospital. Iconographic analysis has enabled us to identify the work as a dynamic composition in which, although the most striking thing is the fire, the most important element is the human being. In this sense, it is surprising that there is no trace of the nursing profession in this portrayal, from which we deduct that the collective memory did not consider nursing to have enough identity in the late s. XVIII.

Keywords : Nursing History; Nursing Iconography; Nursing History Sources; Goya.