hospital

Institutional facility for the care of the sick, injured, and incapacitated.

In ancient times, temples of deities such as Aesculapius offered facilities for treatment and by the 4th century, the Christian church had founded hospitals for lepers, cripples, the blind, the sick, and the poor. The oldest surviving hospital in Europe is the 7th-century Hôtel Dieu, Paris; in Britain, the most ancient are St Bartholomew's (1123) and St Thomas's (1200) in London; and in the Americas the Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth, Mexico (1524).

Medical knowledge advanced during the Renaissance, and hospitals became increasingly secularized after the Reformation. In the 19th century, further progress was made in hospital design, administration, and staffing (Florence Nightingale played a significant role in this). In the 20th century there has been an increasing trend towards specialization and the inclusion of maternity wards. Modern hospitals have abandoned the single-room Nightingale design for wards in favour of four- or six-bedded rooms, where patients have more privacy.