was degraded and banished to a town inhabited only by the
despised Jews.


ARABIAN HOSPITALS

To early Christians belong the credit of having established the
first charitable institutions for caring for the sick; but their
efforts were soon eclipsed by both Eastern and Western
Mohammedans. As early as the eighth century the Arabs had begun
building hospitals, but the flourishing time of hospital building
seems to have begun early in the tenth century. Lady Seidel, in
918 A.D., opened a hospital at Bagdad, endowed with an amount
corresponding to about three hundred pounds sterling a month.
Other similar hospitals were erected in the years immediately
following, and in 977 the Emir Adad-adaula established an
enormous institution with a staff of twenty-four medical
officers. The great physician Rhazes is said to have selected the
site for one of these hospitals by hanging pieces of meat in
various places about the city, selecting the site near the place
at which putrefaction was slowest in making its appearance. By
the middle of the twelfth century there were something like sixty
medical institutions in Bagdad alone, and these institutions were
free to all patients and supported by official charity.

The Emir Nureddin, about the year 1160, founded a great hospital
at Damascus, as a thank-offering for his victories over the
Crusaders. This great institution completely overshadowed all the
earlier Moslem hospitals in size and in the completeness of its
equipment. It was furnished with facilities for teaching, and was