Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy of Science, Chair of Department of History of Science, Faculty of Science Studies and West Philosophical Research, The Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies Science (IHCS), Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (2006 Views)
It is a widely held belief that "health care" is an old concept. As one of the most important institutions dealing with this issue, the hospital has been treating human beings throughout human civilization. But historical studies show that, in the pre-modern era, the hospital was not for the treatment of patients. Its function was as a nursing home for the poor and patients. In this article, we attempt to examine the reasons for this in two ways. We first examine the socioeconomic conditions that led to this function for hospitals in the middle ages. We then show that the treatment of patients at that time was based on humorism and classification medicine, which was not only considered the hospital as a place of treatment but also considered it as a barrier to treatment. Therefore, the hospital served as a hospice for the elderly and disabled, and veterans.
Type of Study:
Research |
Subject:
History of Medicine Received: 2019/09/30 | Accepted: 2019/11/20 | Published: 2019/03/15