Did Christians Invent Hospitals?
This will be the last of my posts on this thread, connected with what I hope is my next book, that I’m calling tentatively, The Creation of Charity: How Christianity Transformed our World. Here I talk about one of the lesser-known aspects of early Christianity – a surprising one to most people. Arguably the most important development in the Christian history of charity came in the institutionalization of giving, not on the governmental level but through extra-mural ecclesiastical organizations. Of these, none proved more historically significant than the invention of the hospital. Most health care in the Greek and Roman worlds took place in the home, with families bearing the responsibility of nursing the sick. That, of course, is not the most effective mode of health care, but even simple nursing often produces salubrious results. Certainly, there were doctors trained in medical science who attended the sick, but these were private initiatives and as a rule benefited only with those of means. Doctors worked as individuals, out of their homes or through home-visitations to those who [...]
