Medicine and Health (continued)

 

Part V: Hospitals - One of the Greatest Achievements of Medieval Islamic Science

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Left: Hospital in Divrig, Turkey, 1156 A.D. Right: Dar Us-Sifa Hospital of Bayazid II, Edirne, Turkey, begun 1471 A.D.. Both imgages from Thais's Islamic architecture site.

 

A. Muslim Hospitals

Hospitals were one of the greatest achievements of the Muslims during the Middle Ages. Hospitals were built all over the Muslim World with high standards of health care. One of the reasons for the Muslims' interest in health was the saying of the Prophet Muhammad that God had given a cure for every disease. Furthermore, the third Pillar of Islam was charity which could go to the poor and sick, so the building of hospitals and taking care of the sick was a part of a religious duty.

 

1. The First Hospitals

The Muslims established their first hospital during the period of Waleed bin-e-Abd-al Malik (who ruled from 685 to 705 A.D.) . It was meant exclusively (only) for the leprosy patients. The physicians who were sent to work in this hospital were given large properties and salaries. The patients at this hospital had orders to stay permanently at the hospital and in addition to their food and shelter, were given some money. Blind people also received care and money from the government.

2. Kinds of Hospitals

There were two kinds of hospitals - mobile (moving) hospitals and permanent hospitals. Mobile hospitals moved from village to village where there were no permanent hospitals. Health care was provided by the caliphs and kings. (It was part of their duty under Islam and many wanted to show the people that they were good Muslims.)

There were hospitals for many different groups of people. Some were for the army men and they had their own special doctors. There were special doctors attending to the caliphs, the military commanders, and the nobles. There were separate hospitals for prisoners. There were even centers to provide free first aid, which were usually located at busy public places like the big mosques.

There were also hospitals for women run by trained mid-wives and women doctors. [See below.]

This image is from The Rise of Islam by Moktefi, illustrated by Sedat Tosun, Silver Burdett Publishers, 1985, page 53. Out of print.

 

These hospitals were open to everybody and no fees of any kind were charged. No distinction was made between the poor and the rich, citizen and alien, local and foreign, or between a common man and a distinguished person.

Doctors were well trained and the hospitals were clean. Patients with contagious diseases were isolated from others. There were high standards of health care and sanitation.

 

B. Compare this with Hospitals in Europe

During the Golden Age of Islamic Medicine (around the years 900 - 1150), Europe was experiencing a "Dark Age" in science and medicine. In contrast to the Islamic Empire, in Christian Europe disease was often thought to be a punishment for sins - and therefore, the treatment might be prayer or even self-punishment. Some diseases were thought to be the result of witchcraft or black magic and many treatments were really based on superstitions and folk remedies. There was a poor understanding of the connection between cleanliness and health, so diseases spread quickly. These poor health care practices continued into the 18th century in many parts of Europe. Below, an observer describes a hospital in Paris, the capital of France in 1710.

"The ... wards (hospital rooms for many people) were damp and stinking and dark, in the absence of any windows or ventilators (air holes), in which more than eight hundred patients were lying on the ground (for there weren't enough beds). There was hardly room for them to lie down comfortably, so they were miserably huddled up there on the bare ground or on a heap of rubbish (garbage)! A pitiable sight indeed for any person with human feelings. On a bed of average size five or six patients were lying in a heap, the feet of one over the head of another, the young in the company of the old, women by the side of men. Although it violates common sense, yet it is the bare truth. On the one side there is a woman menstruating (in her monthly bleeding) and by her side was lying a child laid down by typhoid and in a state of convulsion and is burning with fever. And both these are in turn lying with a victim of skin infection and scratching his (diseased) skin with his equally dirty blood stained nails, and pus is being spilled on the bed which cannot be soiled any further. The bad quality of food given to them is as bad as can be, and that too in a very meager quantity (small amount) and irregularly after long intervals (periods of time).

"The nuns supervising the working of this hospital prefer to help the rich patients, and provide wine at the cost of the poor patients. Sometimes they gave the sweet dishes and other rich foods, received as alms (money given as charity), to such patients for whom they were detrimental (harmful) due to their peculiar maladies (sicknesses). So some of them died of overeating, indigestion, even cholera, while others died of starvation. The doors of this hospital were always open and every one could come and go any time. In this way diseases could spread outside the hospital. There were heaps of human excretions and the air was heavily laden with noxious odors. Food arrangements were limited wholly to alms (charity). If the rich people had not sent cooked food to the hospital, the inmates would have died of starvation, as some of them died of overeating and drinking heavily. The beddings were teeming (filled) with insects and even vermin (rats and mice). The atmosphere (air) of these wards was so foul (nasty, stinky) that the nurses and attendants found it difficult to enter even after putting pieces of cloth moistened with vinegar to their noses. If a patient died there, his corpse (dead body) would not be removed for at least twenty-four hours, from the hospital bed. At times such corpses got bloated (swollen up) and began to rot and stink, but still lay by the side of another patient on the same bed who would find himself nearer death due to this agonizingly foul atmosphere." (Quoted/abridged from "Hospitals and Medical Schools in the Dark and Middle Ages" by Dr. A. Zahoor)

 

Learn More About It:

 

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Go to Diseases and Cures - Page 2

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