Infirmeria Szpitala Świętego Ducha w Rzymie w XVII-XVIII wieku
Authors: Surdacki Marian 
Published: February 2024

INFIRMARY of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome in the 17th and 18th Centuries The subject of the author’s research in this publication was the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome, founded in 1198 by Pope Innocent III, which is the most famous and largest charitable institution in Europe, run by the Order of Canons Regular of the Holy Ghost, whose founder was Guido of Montpellier. Until the unification of Italy (1870), the hospital was divided into two separate but integral institutions with different functions: a proper hospital for the sick (the infirmary) and a shelter for abandoned children (brephotrophium). The function and medical mission of the Canons’ hospital became the focus of the author’s research. Although there are a number of scattered and fragmentary publications, the pope’s Hospital of the Holy Spirit, as an infirmary, has not yet been the subject of a consistent and comprehensive scholarly study. Filling this gap became an urgent and fundamental task for scientific, social and civilisation-humanitarian reasons. The project has led to the writing of the first comprehensive study that is highly relevant to European culture. The monograph devoted to the treatment and medical section of this hospital is a pioneering achievement. In this way, this architecturally imposing building has seen an integral two-part study of two completely separate institutions, as the first part, dedicated to the care of abandoned children, was prepared by the author in an earlier book. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit was a multi-ward and multi-purpose facility housing about 1,000 male patients on average, suffering predominantly from various malaria fevers. In accordance with the wishes of the popes, it was a place of free treatment of the poor, who were always the most numerous group of patients. The hospital was also famous for its internal surgical hospital for the wounded. It was an unparalleled institution in terms of the number of medical and surgical staff. At the same time, it was an educational institution, with an internal surgical school where future surgeons were educated, as well as a cultural and scientific unit with the famous medical library and the Lancisiana Academy, and an anatomical theatre for experimental purposes where public demonstrations were organised, performed by both surgical professors and student nurses. The infirmary followed an original system of training surgeons and nursing staff (not used today), where young men look after patients while studying at the surgical school. The Infirmary of the Holy Spirit was thus both a treatment and a training/teaching institution. The results obtained from the research, have mainly academic but also cognitive exploratory importance to the general public. They show civilizational processes occurring over time, linked to general scientific progress, as they show the the evolution of civilizational processes, associated with general scientific progress, such as the disappearance of the malaria epidemic, the creation of new medicines (quinine) and improved treatment methods, the curbing of mortality related to certain diseases (tuberculosis or scurvy), improvements in surgery techniques (new instruments, anaesthetics), changes in the general attitude towards the insane and the birth of psychiatry, the introduction of vaccinations, the transition from the hospice model to the modern hospital, the development of a hospital clinic, the rising status of surgeons and making them equal to doctors, and the introduction of patient statistics. Such knowledge should be of particular interest to representatives of the medical world, not only those dealing with medicine as scientists. The care and treatment of the sick is among the most important problems of European and world culture. Therefore, finding out about the development of medical treatment and the evolution of the hospital from a medieval hospice to a modern institution – the medical clinic – was a compelling motive and an important academic imperative. This is all the more important because the history of institutional medicine is an unpopular subdiscipline of historical research. Therefore, the study of the Roman infirmary, being highly significant for the development of medicine and medical treatment, has added to universal historiography and will exert a universal and humanitarian impact. It has contributed to social history (the Annales school), the history of Rome and the Church (the papacy and religious orders), and the history of medicine. It also fills the research gap mentioned above and prompts further similar research into the history of other significant European hospitals, as well as the level of medical art practiced there.