Changes

We think of hospitals as being a foundation to modern healthcare systems; however, the emergence of hospitals is not only ancient but it also evolved through a complex history. Hospitals were seen as a way to address healthcare in increasingly urban spaces in the ancient world. In the Medieval and Modern periods, new practices emerged that allowed them to be integrated within educational, government, and private institutions.

Early hospitals may have had their origins from temple institutions in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In both these cultures, temples and priests, who also performed healing duties, may have used part of the temple compounds as areas for patients to be healed for a variety of diseases and sicknesses. Early surgical practice is also recorded, mostly likely by the 3rd millennium BCE. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, doctors like performed surgery dealing with c-section and removal of boils. More complicated surgery may have been practiced; however, the limitation of not having anesthesia and infection would have made surgery at times very dangerous. What these early hospitals, or institutions, indicate is that as cities and urban areas emerged, it was clear that large populations also made it easy for sickness to spread. Hospitals and healing of common diseases, infections and every surgery became a major necessity at the dawn of urbanism. Similar to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, ancient Greece also had gods devoted to healing. The god Asclepius and his cult may have functioned similarly to healing gods and practices in Egypt and Mesopotamia, where the temples could have been used as areas for people to come and receive a form of healthcare, including medicine and surgery in cases.