MEDI/EVAL SCIENCE AMONG ARABIANS 



endowed with an amount corresponding to a' 

 three hundred pounds sterling a month. Other 

 similar hospitals were erected in the years immediately 

 following, and in 977 the Emir Adad-adaula es- 

 tablished 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 ap- 

 pearance. 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 in- 

 stitution completely overshadowed all the earlier 

 Moslem hospitals in size and in the completeness of its 

 equipment. It was furnished with facilities for teach- 

 ing, and was conducted for several centuries in a 

 lavish manner, regardless of expense. But little over 

 a century after its foundation the fame of its methods 

 of treatment led to the establishment of a larger and 

 still more luxurious institution the Mansuri hospital 

 at Cairo. It seems that a certain sultan, having been 

 cured by medicines from the Damascene hospital, 

 determined to build one of his own at Cairo which 

 should eclipse even the great Damascene institution. 



In a single year (1283-1284) this hospital was begun 

 and completed. No efforts were spared in hurrying 

 on the good work, and no one was exempt from per- 



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