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Originally Posted by nguirado
What do soldiers, slaves, and gladiators have in common? They're all property, useful to their masters in some way. There wasn't widespread charity or places of care for the common person.
However, perhaps I was too absolute. How's this: Charity and care for those not useful increased many fold with Christianity. Some of the concepts, like a duty to care for people (on account of them being created in the image of God) even without compensation, were so rare in the pagan world that it may be said that Christians "invented" it.
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Sorry, nguirado, if you look at some of the links we've attached above, you'll find that this simply isn't true. Here's the "Early examples" link again from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital#Early_examples
You pulled out the example of the valetudinaria, but ignored the sections on the institutions in India, Greece, Sri Lanka and Persia.
Note also the quote from this wiki entry (C. Elgood, A Medical History of Persia, (Cambridge Univ. Press), p. 173):
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One expert has argued that "to a very large extent, the credit for the whole hospital system must be given to Persia
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Graham