St. Fabiola and her hospital
In about AD 380, a wealthy patrician matron gave money for a hospital to be built in Portus, the ancient port of Rome. This hospital was one of the first of its kind in the western part of the Roman empire, designed to provide care for the multitude of poor people living in the capital. […]
Great Ormond Street and JM Barrie
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cover of Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie, 1915. Colorized by Binaire on Wikimedia. Bloomsbury: Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Crop of photo by Nigel Cox on geograph.org.uk via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. James Matthew Barrie (1860–1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He wrote about thirty novels […]
Long before Pearl Harbor, an entire hospital was sent to help England in World War II
Edward Tabor Bethesda, MD, United States An Allied convoy underway in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. Photo c. 1942. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia. Public domain. Harvard University President James B. Conant had the idea of sending a fully staffed hospital to England to help the British in their war with Germany […]
Las Animas: A Cuban yellow fever hospital
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States David Schwartz Atlanta, Georgia, United States Fig. 1. Ward 1 of Las Animas Hospital for yellow fever patients. First published in 1904 by Enrique Barnet in his monograph on Las Animas Hospital.3 Public domain. John Hay, U.S. Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, described the Spanish-American War […]
Guadalupe: One of Spain’s oldest schools of medicine
Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. The Monastery of Guadalupe. Main entrance. Photo by Rafa G. Recuero. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 ES. Guadalupe, a small Spanish town in the district of Cáceres, Extremadura, arose around a monastery. Legend says that a shepherd named Gil Cordero was looking for a stray sheep when […]
St. Godric and the lost leper hospital of Darlington
Stephen Martin UK Fig 1. Godric praying to the Virgin, c 1400. PD-US, accessed: wikimedia, original: ©British Library Board, Cotton, Faustina, VI, ii 16 V. In the late 1100s, the English monk Reginald of Durham wrote an account in Latin of the hermit St. Godric, whom he knew personally.1 Reginald attributed over two hundred […]
The monastic infirmaries of North Yorkshire
Stephen Martin UK Fig 1. Well-preserved walls of Rievaulx Abbey, 1225-40. Photo © author, 2021, permission for non-commercial and academic reuse. Fig 2. Rievaulx, decorated gothic chancel of the Abbey Church, c. 1240, looking west, avant-garde architecture for its time. Photo © author, 2021, permission for non-commercial and academic reuse. North […]
The medieval hospitals of County Durham
Stephen Martin County Durham, UK Fig 1. Durham Cathedral, gate of Benedictine Priory, exterior, built by Prior Castell, 1494-1519. Photo © author, 2021, permission for academic & non-commercial reuse. County Durham in the northeast of England is rich in the atmospheric remains and documented history of medieval hospitals, all connected with the church. Looking […]
Hospitals in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)
“But they take more care of their sick than of any others; these are lodged and provided for in public hospitals. They have belonging to every town four hospitals, that . . . are so large that they may pass for little towns; by this means, if they had ever such a number of sick […]
The Sorokdo National Hospital of South Korea
Lucy Eum New Brunswick, Canada The wooden operating table used for vasectomies and sterilizations. Photo by Lucy Eum. 2012. Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, has historically been a highly stigmatized condition.1 For centuries it was thought to be a curse, a punishment for sin, or a hereditary disease.2 It was not until 1873 […]