What was a medieval hospital Like?
There were over a thousand hospitals in medieval England, but they did not look like any hospital you might know, nor did they care for patients in a way that you would recognise today. Indeed, the medieval English hospital was an entirely different creature from its modern descendent. Firstly, they had no professionally trained doctors or surgeons, and seldom was any ‘medical’ treatment offered. Indeed, medieval hospitals in England were not founded to provide medical treatment as we understand it, and people with apparently incurable or contagious diseases were often denied entry. However, as we shall see, this does not mean that patients were neglected or that standards were woefully poor.
