Care for the sick: two hospitals

This lesson asks you to write in the target language about a community and what it has given the world. The museum offers one example, how two hospitals cared for their patients. The comparison with health care in Canada, and the writing itself, your class does. ¹

List what each record says about who was cared for, who paid for it and what was supplied. Decide what you would keep in a paragraph and what needs another source.

Al-Maqrizi adds oversight to the account of Ibn Tulun's hospital: Ibn Tulun rode out every Friday to inspect the stores and their contents, physicians and patients ². The same narrative ends those visits after an incident with a patient ². Al-Maqrizi relates that a patient told the ruler he was not mentally ill but had contrived to obtain a pomegranate from Arish. The ruler ordered one brought; the patient then threw it at his chest, and the account says his inspections stopped afterwards ².

A reader of the accounts of Baghdad's Adudi hospital may meet the story that al-Razi hung meat to choose its site. The record on Ibn Tulun's hospital, following TDV, says the story cannot fit the foundation date, because he died decades earlier, and the article proposes a confusion between the names Adudi and Mu'tadidi ³. The record draws the lesson that a similar name or activity cannot move a doctor's work into a hospital he never saw ^{3 2}.

TDV's summary turns the fruit into an apple, whereas the Arabic image read says "a pomegranate from Arish" ^{3 2}. The record keeps the small difference because tracing a story includes its details. It treats the story as a source's anecdote, not a clinical record from which to diagnose a person retrospectively ². Of the Adudi hospital, the record says the encyclopedia describes twenty-four doctors at its foundation, including specialists in internal medicine, eyes, surgery and bone-setting, and that Ibn Abi Usaybia's original account was not independently read for this addition ³.

The account says Ibn Tulun's inspections stopped after the incident ². Defend your answer against the objection that the account is our only witness: is a story of this kind better evidence of the hospital's care or of the ruler's habits, and why?

• The Adudi Bimaristan: what Ibn al-Jawzi says of its opening and equipment.
• Ibn Tulun's endowed civilian hospital: the patient's journey, the Friday visits, and the differing dates and stories.
• Waqf: the endowment form on which the hospital rested.
• The Mosque of Ibn Tulun: the surviving building from the same patron's programme.

Read the records on the Adudi Bimaristan and on Ibn Tulun's hospital. Write a paragraph that compares what each supplied to its patients, using only what the records say.