The greatest medical minds of all time would not have been able to accomplish great feats without the support of great institutions. The Muslim world of the Golden Ages, with its vast financial resources and strong political institutions, established some of the first hospitals in history. The impetus to build hospitals came from the need to care for the health of poorer citizens. The wealthy were able to hire private physicians and pay for home treatment, but the poor had no such luxury. To provide for them, caliphs and emirs established large institutions in the great cities of the Muslim world aimed at providing affordable or free healthcare to anyone who would need it.
In the early ninth century, the first hospitals began to appear in Baghdad. As the hospitals grew over time, they began to resemble modern hospitals in size and scope. Hospitals had dozens of doctors and nurses, including specialists and surgeons. They contained outpatient centers, psychiatric wards, surgery centers and maternity wards. Perhaps the biggest difference was that the hospitals of that era were free to those who could not afford it; a far cry from the revenue-fueled hospitals of today. To the patrons of these hospitals, the Prophetic example of compassion was clear. In their eyes, a society based on Islam was expected to care for all its citizens, regardless of wealth, race or even religion.
After first being established in Baghdad, these enlightened institutions of healing spread to the rest of the Muslim world’s major cities throughout the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Hospitals could be found in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, and even distant Granada in Iberia. The Ottomans would later carry on this tradition of public hospitals, and it was during their long reign that Europe would begin to catch up, and even surpass, the Muslim world.
The Renaissance saw a move to translate hundreds of Arabic texts into Latin in the great cultural and scientific centers such as Padua and Bologna. Europeans were able to further advance the knowledge of giants such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina, who advanced the knowledge of Galen and Hippocrates. Today’s medical knowledge and institutions come largely from the West, but are based on the earlier Muslim medical tradition, which in turn was based on ancient Greece. The clash of civilizations narrative that is promoted by extremists on both sides of modern conflicts neglects examples of cross-cultural intellectual traditions such as this.
Source:
Lost Islamic History, Firas AlKhateeb, pp. 89,90
