ABSTRACT
For the emerging state, protecting lives as a way of increasing the labour supply for the economy, and the army was one of the main justifications for closer control over hospitals. Except in Portugal, where the subject caused no controversy at all, hospitals were at the heart of disputes between the crown and the church over welfare throughout Catholic Europe, depending of course on how individual monarchs received and interpreted the guidelines issued by the Council of Trent. The situation in Portugal was not very different in terms of the crowns position and certain types of health care provided in the hospitals, but not in relation to the role played by the Daughters of Charity. Hospital users in general are poor, and in the towns and cities studied so far they were mostly unmarried men. Although most patient admission records in vora omit occupations, an analysis of individual life courses confirms the close relationship between hospital admissions and production cycles.
