Inside the first hospitals of the ancient world | BBC Global

For millennia, healthcare practices were passed down orally within the scattered tribes of our ancestors. Cures from nature, remedies, incantations, and rituals all passed down generation to generation, at times through specific figures within these early communities such as shamans, witch doctors, and healers. With the origin of writing, these treatments became formalized, and in Europe, temples dedicated to the healing divinity Asclepius were where these treatments were collected, tested, and recorded. Palaces of healing considered some of the earliest hospitals in history. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean. It is a place where African and European cultures coexist. This is the valley of the temples in Agrigento, Sicily, the site of a two and a half thousand year old civilization that ruled over the land until the Romans arrived in the third century BC. This is the sanctuary of Asclepius, ancient Greek god of medicine and healing, where care combined with empirical observation, clinical experience, and spirituality. From the mid-4th century BC onward, in addition to the temple, the complex included a treasury for storing votive offerings, as well as several other buildings arranged within a large rectangular enclosure, accessed through a monumental gate. These other buildings included fountains and several cisterns, essential for the cult practices that required abundant water. Sanctuaries to Asclepius were built near sources of water. Water was vital. It was needed when the faithful came inside the sanctuary to wash and purify themselves. Two Bothroi sacrificial pits near the temple altar, Estiatoria, dining rooms for communal banquets, the Abaton, place where the ritual incubation and healing took place, and finally Catagogeia, kind of hostels where pilgrims could stay overnight. Hospitality, a canteen, healers, and treatments all in one place. These early hospitals may have been the birthplace of medicine, though practices were still steeped heavily in superstition and magic. Asclepius, for healing, was carried out through a specific ritual. First, the sick would offer a sacrifice to the god and the altar was in the front of the temple, but today we cannot see anything. Usually it was a rooster, an animal that crows at dawn and thus symbolizes rebirth from the darkness of illness and affliction. Second, the sick person underwent a catharsis ceremony or lustration involving sacred ablutions. The sanctuary priests purified them with water and laurel, invoking Asclepius to cleanse them and to prolong their life. Third, the sick spent the night in the Abaton, in this place for the incubation, which means that during sleep the sick awaited either a direct healing or a visitation from the god who would reveal the appropriate treatment. The dream was interpreted by priests who determined the treatment based on its meaning. If the treatment proved successful, patients returned to the sanctuary and they deposited votive offerings into the shrine's central well. The faithful would bring donations to hope for healing or healing that had already come. These are the ones that represent the anatomical forms. This is a part of the leg and this is the left hand. One of the most interesting ones is a right foot with the shoe. There are also a series of small vases. They were certainly used to contain precious ointments for medicines based on geotal, i.e. the elaboration of plants. The cult of Asclepius' medicine dates back to the 4th century, linked to medicine, to the use of herbs that were probably elaborated within the sanctuary. For example, the lathern was used for intestinal stipsy, or the rosemary for its antiseptic properties, the hemp for its hemostatic properties. This is the Iperico, or St. John's weed. It's called devil's chase because if you put it in front of the door, it chases away negativity. The flowers, the tenderest buds, which are put to macerate, then this comes out. When the colour is red, it means that the operation has been successful. It's miraculous against burns. Away from city centres, the medical knowledge that lay the foundations for these early hospitals would be carried on orally by village healers. And in places like Sicily, traditional healers have passed this knowledge down from mother to daughter for millennia. With the planet, it's the only relationship that can save yourself and everyone else.