Medical care in late antiquity.

Late antiquity witnessed one revolution in the medical scene: the birth of the hospital. (1) Literary sources occasionally mention hospitals, but only documents from Egypt reveal how widespread they were. (2) The origin of the hospital as an independent institution for the care and treatment of the sick can be dated to the third quarter of the fourth century AD. (3) Documents from Egypt record a multitude of hospitals founded by private individuals and independent of ecclesiastical institutions. (4) The will of a public physician from Antinoöpolis documents the involvement of professionals in the hospitals of late antiquity. (5) The hospital resolved major tensions in the medical, ecclesiastical and religious scenes of late antiquity.