Nice to see O'Bama working on getting rid of midnight Bush rules

[kandrathe]

This is not ironic. Old hospitals were not places you went to be healed. They were places where you went to die in the arms of god. Nobody in the modern world (with the exception of Mother Teresa) uses this archaic form of hospital care, which killed vastly more people than it saved. It was "benevolent" only in the sense that it brought poor people to god, which, if you don't believe in god, is no value whatsoever.

I don't think you are giving old Bart's a fair shake. I'm quite sure that many sick people have walked away from there healed. This source says, "The King(Henry VIII) commanded that Bart's duty was to minister to prisoners, to shelter the poor, to visit the sick, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and bury the dead. The Masters of the Hospital resolutely ignored these instructions concentrating their efforts as before on caring for the sick."