What Were Hospitals and Health Care Like in the Middle Ages?

The Medievals had three types of hospitals. The first, known as the leprosaria, for those afflicted with leprosy. The second were those erected for the general use of pilgrims and sick travellers and the third were intended to give shelter to the elderly. A lot were a mixture of the three types, and all were used to look after the needs of the poor, where the inmates would receive care and possibly some rudimentary forms of treatment. Only the rich would have been able to afford the expertise of a trained physician or surgeon, and they would have been treated in their own homes. Poor-sick people would have used the skills of local healers and herbalists as well as the domestic cures passed on to them from female relatives.