An Investigation On The Hospitals Of Military Orders In The 12-13th Century

As organizations with both religious and military identities,the Military Orders appeared in the Latin East in the 12 th century after the rise of the Crusades.Hospitals established by the Military Orders provided a wide range of medical services to the Latin East community,improving the health conditions of the Crusaders and the inhabitants of the Latin East.With the final failure of the Crusades in the late 13 th century,hospitals of the Military Orders disappeared in the Latin East.The emergence and development of hospitals of Military Orders was not only the product of the specific historical environment,but also had their own rationality.The hospitals of Military Orders were born during the Crusades to meet the urgent practical needs of the Crusaders and the Latin East society for medical treatments.As special religious orders,the Military Orders established hospitals and carried out medical treatments,which were also the embodiment of the medical tradition of Western European monasteries in the Middle Ages.And the military nature of the Military Orders showed a high organizational efficiency,which gave them a significant advantage in hospital management and medical treatments.The Military Orders generally formulated a unified,strict and specific management system for their hospitals.Hospitals of the Military Orders generally followed their medical rules strictly,and only in the most unfavourable circumstances could they be accommodated.The strict system ensured the fairness of health,even the most vulnerable patients in the hospitals of Military Orders would also get equal treatments with meticulous cares,made the Latin Eastern hospitals of Military Orders in almost two hundred years of its existence,had maintained the original founded universality,the commonweal characteristic,and obtained the aristocracy Latin Eastern people’s recognitions and supports.The unified system also ensured a steady raising of funds and a stable supply of foods and medicines.Any hospital of Military Orders could obtain material or financial supports from other branches of the Order through institutional arrangements.The unified and strict management system was an important reason for the stable development of the hospitals of the Military Orders in the Latin East over the past two centuries.The hospitals of the Military Orders also had clear regulations on the composition and division of the medical staff.The medical staff consisted of doctors and paramedics.Doctors were usually employed by hospitals on a permanent basis,and hospitals employed many types of doctors to meet different treatment needs.The paramedics were regular members of Military Orders with the status of friars or sergeants and were called the medical brothers.The intensive treatment work of doctors and the meticulous care of the patients by the medical staff ensure the high medical efficiency and maintain the huge scale of the hospitals of the Military Orders.For two centuries,the hospitals of Military Orders provided stable medical services to the Latin East,improving the health of the Latin East and enhancing the local identity with the Crusader regimes.And the hospitals of Military Orders had certain international characteristics as they were born in the Latin East,which many ethnic groups lived in and bordered on the Arab regions.They not only served as a medium for the exchange of medical knowledge between the Arab region and Western Europe,but also laid the foundation for the Military Orders to carry out transnational medical activities in Europe by providing medical services to immigrants from different parts of Europe.