Medicine and DiseaseAncient Medicine |
Were there hospitals before the Middle Ages? |
Public hospitals emerged during the Middles Ages (500–1350), as Christianity spread and religious orders set up the facilities to serve the poor. Still, most people received a doctor’s care in the privacy of their own homes. The concept of a public health care facility originated in India as early as the third century B.C. when Buddhists established hospital-like installations.
The Middle Ages saw the establishment of facilities more closely resembling modern hospital including Paris’s Hotel Dieu (founded in the seventh century); today it is the oldest hospital still in operation. In 970 a hospital in Baghdad (in present-day Iraq) divided physicians into the equivalent of modern-day interns and externs. Its pharmacy disseminated drugs (as well as spices deemed to have medicinal value) from all over the known world.