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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 . <ref>For more on early temple-based healing and patient care in the ancient world, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, see: Griffin, D. J. (Ed.). (2011). Hospitals: what they are and how they work (4th ed). Sudbury, MAass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.</ref>. Early surgical practice is also recorded, mostly likely by the 3rd millennium BCE and became more common by the 2nd millennium BCE. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, doctors likely performed surgery dealing with c-section and removal of boils . <ref>McIntosh, J. (2005). Ancient Mesopotamia: new perspectives. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, pg. 275.</ref>. 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 even 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 . <ref>For more on Asclepius, see: Edelstein, E. J. L., & Edelstein, L. (1998). Asclepius: collection and interpretation of the testimonies (Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed). Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.</ref>.

Perhaps the first true teaching hospital known to us, the Academy of Gondishapu, was established by the Sassanid Persians by the 5th century CE. Groups of medical scholars, who also came from the Byzantine Empire as Christian refugees because they were Nestorian Christians, banned by the emperor in Constantinople, came to Gundeshapur in Southwest Iran. They helped found an academy that had devoted medical facilities not only for healing and practice of surgery but the academy began to be developed and dedicated to education. It is here that concepts of anatomy were developed and scholarships akin to medical science developed in conjunction with dedicated medical facilities. By the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the institution likely became the most important medical center in the world. The academy attracted physicians from much of the ancient world, including from India and China. Medical students now were required to work closely with their educators and became apprenticed in the practice while working in the hospital . <ref>For more on the Academy of Gondishapu, see: Frye, R. N., & Arberry, A. J. (Eds.). (2007). The Cambridge history of Iran. Vol. 4: The period from the Arab invasion to the Saljuqs (Repr). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.</ref>.