Hospitals, Part 1

Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine
by James Sands Elliott

(Page 12 of 15)

With reference to the important question of the foundation of hospitals, there are two opposing opinions - one, attributing their foundation almost entirely to Christianity, and the other denying to Christianity any pre-eminent influence. The truth lies between these two conflicting views, but nearer to the statement of Mr. Brace than of Mr. McCabe. The truths and influences of Christianity, in the mind of the latter author, are obscured by the many errors of the Church, especially in the Early and Middle Ages; and it is of the utmost importance to distinguish, where necessary, between the teaching of the Founder of Christianity as disclosed in the New Testament, and the teaching of the Church which made many very evident errors, and whose practice soon became different from that inculcated by its Founder, so that at times the Christianity of the Church was as different from Christ's teaching as the vine of Sodom from the grapes of Eshcol. The fact that Christianity emerged from this eclipse points to it as something more than a humanly devised system.

In very early times, the sick were allowed to remain at the temples for the treatment of their diseases, and medical students also attended for instruction. This system was the hospital system of later times, although the temples were not hospitals in the present sense of the word. The system in vogue in the temples of Æsculapius in Greece and Rome has already been described in this book, but the temples of Saturn served the same purpose in Egypt four thousand years before Christ. Professor Ebers of Leipzig, a high authority on the subject, says that Heliopolis undoubtedly had a clinique in connection with the temple. The Emperor Asoka founded many hospitals in Hindustan, and Buddhists and Mohammedans both possessed hospitals ("Encyclopædia Britannica").

Patients were attracted to temples, not only by receiving the services of the priest-physicians, but also in the superstitious belief that special virtue attached to the precincts of sacred buildings. Thus, in the temples of Æsculapius, sick people tried to get as near to the altar as possible. "It may fairly be surmised that the disuse of these temples in Christian times made the necessity of hospitals more apparent, and so led to their institution, in much the same way as in this country the suppression of monasteries, which had largely relieved the indigent poor, made the necessity of poor laws immediately evident." During Hadrian's reign the first notice of a military hospital appears.

The iatria, or tabernæ medicæ, described by Galen and others, were not for in-patients, but of the nature of dispensaries for the reception of out-patients. Seneca refers to valetudinaria, rooms set aside for the sick in large private houses. The first hospital in Rome in Christian times was founded by Fabiola, a wealthy lady, at the end of the fourth century. Attached to it was a convalescent home in the country. Pulcheria, later, built and endowed several hospitals at Constantinople, and these subsequently increased in number. Pauline abandoned wealth and social position and went to Jerusalem, and there established a hospital and sisterhood under the direction of St. Jerome. St. Augustine founded a hospital at Hippo. McCabe states justly: "In the new religious order a philanthropic heroism was evolved that was certainly new to Europe. In the whole story of Stoicism there is no figure like that of a Catherine of Sienna sucking the sores of a leper, or a Vincent de Paul." It appears evident that Christianity was an important factor in the foundation of hospitals and charitable institutions, not directly, but from its beneficent influence on the character of individuals; and the Roman Church, in this respect, acted in conformity with the teachings of the Christian faith.

Of greater importance is the consideration of the influence of Christianity, and of the Church, on the investigation and elimination of disease. In this matter the Church deserves the severest censure. It is no exaggeration to say that she hindered the scientific progress of the world for centuries. She applied to the explanation of the causation of disease, the demon theories inherited from Egypt, Persia, and the East. The Bible itself reflects the views on demonology current at the time of the events recorded. If demons were the cause of disease, logically the treatment of diseases should have been in the hands of priests, not of physicians. The priests held that they were the proper people to interpret the will of the Almighty; diseases were direct dispensations of Providence.

"It is demons," says Origen, "which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air, and pestilence. They hover concealed in clouds, in the lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." "All diseases of Christians," wrote Augustine, "are to be ascribed to these demons: chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, yea! even the guiltless new-born infants." Hippocrates, long before the Christian era, wrote with great wisdom in reference to the so-called sacred diseases: "To me it appears that such affections are just as much divine as all others are, and that no one disease is either more divine or more human than another; but all are alike divine, for each has its own nature, and no one arises without a natural cause."

The devil might be driven out in disgust, it was thought, by the use of disgusting materials - ordure, the grease made from executed criminals, the livers of toads, the blood of rats, and so on. The same belief in demoniacal possession led to the most inhuman treatment of lunatics, and the Church in this respect is put to shame when we compare its action with the wiser and more humane practice of the Moors. This belief helped to strangle medical progress for centuries, and is directly attributable to the Church. As late as 1583, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna boasted that they had cast out 12,642 devils. That God dispenses both health and disease is a very different belief from that involved in "demoniacal possession." Travellers in remote parts of the East at the present day tell of alleged cases of demoniacal possession, but investigation does not reveal any difference between these cases and epilepsy or acute mania.

Published in 1971 by Milford House Inc. Boston, MA.