03-02-2009, 07:40 PM
Quote:Which is ironic, since many of the world's oldest hospital's (e.g. St Bartholomew's Hospital, founded in 1123.) were formed as benevolent religious care giving institutions.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.
-Jester