The Probert Encyclopaedia of General Information

HOSPITAL

Originally, a hospital was any building appropriated for the reception of any class of persons who were unable to supply their own wants, and were more or less dependent upon public help to have those wants supplied. Hence hospitals were of various kinds, according to the nature of the wants they supplied and the class of persons for whom they are intended. A large number of hospitals were medical; others were for the reception of incurables; others for the aged and infirm; others for the education of children of people in reduced circumstances; others for the reception of the wounded in battle; and so on.

The first establishments of this nature are believed to belong to the 4th century AD. Their primary object was to afford a shelter to strangers and travellers, and it was only occasionally that the sick and infirm were admitted. One of the earliest hospitals of which we have any satisfactory information was that established by the emperor Valens at Caesarea about the end of the 4th century, and which was conducted on a very large scale.

The Arabs in Spain, at an early period of their occupation of that country, founded a magnificent hospital at Cordova, where physicians were trained, who did a vast deal to advance the study of medicine. The Arabs have also the dubious credit of having founded the first mental hospital (then known as a lunatic asylum) in Europe, which was erected in the city of Granada. The majority of hospitals everywhere are medical, often called infirmaries. These may be divided into general and special hospitals, the former class admitting cases of all kinds; the latter class admitting only patients suffering from some special trouble. Thus there were formerly lying-in hospitals, cancer, consumption, ophthalmic, lock (for venereal diseases), fever, and small-pox hospitals. There are also hospitals for children, and for persons suffering from incurable diseases. Such institutions formerly served a double purpose, inasmuch as they not only afford the best medical advice and treatment to the poor, who otherwise were unable to obtain it prior to the formation of the national health service, but also supplied the best means of giving instruction in medicine and surgery, as in them students had the opportunity of witnessing cases of nearly every variety of disease, and observing how they it was treated by the physicians and surgeons. For this reason a good infirmary or medical hospital was considered an indispensable adjunct to every school of medicine and surgery.
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