Hospital

A hospital, in the modern sense, is an institution for health care providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment, and often, but not always providing for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays. Its historical meaning, until relatively recent times, was "a place of hospitality", for example the chelsea royal hospital, established in 1681 to house veteran soldiers.

Today, hospitals are usually funded by the public sector, by health organizations (for profit or nonprofit), health insurance companies or charities, including by direct charitable donations. Historically, however, hospitals were often founded and funded by religious orders or charitable individuals and leaders. Conversely, modern-day hospitals are largely staffed by professional physicians, surgeons, and nurses, whereas in history, this work was usually performed by the founding religious orders or by volunteers. Today, there are various catholic religious orders, such as the alexians and the bon secours sisters which still focus on hospital ministry.

There are over 17,000 hospitals in the world

In ancient cultures, religion and medicine were linked. The earliest documented institutions aiming to provide cures were ancient egyptian temples. In ancient greece, temples dedicated to the healer-god asclepius, known as asclepieia (greek: ασκληπιεία, sing. Asclepieion ασκληπιείον), functioned as centers of medical advice, prognosis, and healing. At these shrines, patients would enter a dream-like state of induced sleep known as "enkoimesis" (greek: ενκοίμησις) not unlike anesthesia, in which they either received guidance from the deity in a dream or were cured by surgery.asclepeia provided carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing.in the asclepieion of epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 bc preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, but with the patient in a state of enkoimesis induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium