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 […]
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the legacy of Long John Silver
George Venters Scotland The “Old Surgical Hospital” as it is today. Courtesy of Dr. Iain MacIntyre. Faced with the danger of having his right foot amputated in 1873, the real “Long John Silver,” the English poet William E. Henley, turned for help to Joseph Lister and became a patient in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. […]
The Metropolitan Hospital of London
Metropolitan Free Hospital. Photo by Ethan Doyle White. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0 Metropolitan Hospital, Kingsland Road. Photo by Dr Neil Clifton. Via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. The Metropolitan Hospital was founded in 1836 to provide medical care to the indigent of London’s East End, with two physicians and three surgeons offering their services […]
The Imperial Asylum at Vincennes
On March 8, 1855, Napoleon III of France announced the creation of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes. It opened in 1857 and was intended to be a place where workers could receive care comparable to military veterans—particularly significant as construction and factory jobs had become more important and more dangerous. The Emperor subsidized the early […]
Children at play in the East London Hospital for Children
The first hospital for children in London was established with ten beds in 1866 during a terrible cholera epidemic. It relied entirely on charity, was enlarged in 1875 and subsequently expanded, merged, and incorporated into larger facilities until it was closed after the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948. At the time it […]