DO WE OWE THE MODERN HOSPITAL SYSTEM TO "MEDIEVAL" ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION?
I invoke this question because of the following quotation of George Sarton (1884- 1956), praised as "father of the history of science":
"We have reason to believe that when, during the crusades, Europe at last began to establish hospitals, they were inspired by the Arabs of near East. ... The first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was founded by Louis IX after his return from the crusade 1254-1260."
I became aware 20 years ago that Islamic scholars countered the Platonism which stymied mechanical research for 2000 years and prolonged slavery. Because the diagonal of a square was incommenurate with the units of its side, Platonists argued, as an anti-Pythagorean philsophy, that "geometry is incompatible with arithmetic". Further, arguing that "motion is geometry set to time", Platonists supposed this to mean that measures of motion cannot be properly expressed by arithmetic. I learned from Essays in the History of Mechanics by Clifford Truesdell that a grave charge against Galileo (1564-1642) was that he was a "Pythagorean" in describing a "law of falling bodies". And I found a paper saying that Islamic experiments in optics and pharmocology has encouraged the beliefs that motion can be arithmetized.
The files at this Websites provide instance after instance that seminal Islamic contributions have been ignored. So it seems to me possible that Islamic contributions to the development of a hospital system might also be ignored.
Buddists in India developed hospitals, but for traveling Buddist monks.

Romans developed hospitals for their solidiers, as did other powers.

Convents and cloisters at the beginning of the Islamic expansion had hospitals, but for their own or for wealthy travelers.


This is a critical question which invites immediate and extensive investigation.