HOSPITALS AND THEIR CRITIQUES IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY-MODERN EUROPE

The paper is to point out some characteristic facts on the medieval christian and early modern hospital, its hygienic situation, and its critique. Light will be thrown on the unhealthy effects of keeping cattle in the medieval town, on its problems with water supply and the removal of feces, on the challenges of pestilence and leprosy, and finally on the hygienic state of the early modern European hospital. The source for that will be the didactic picaresque novel ,,Landstortzer: Gusman von Alfarche oder Picaro genannt'' (1615) by the Jesuit pupil Aegidius Albertinus (1560-1620). Albertinus' novel shows that the early modern hospital sometimes was far from beeing a clean place, and that someone could catch something like a gastrointestinal disease or even the worse more easily in a hospital than elsewhere.