I made a claim in a previous post that Christianity was responsible for the development of hospitals, which seemed to be called into question by a comment I received. I also today got a free subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica for use on my weblog that allows me to link to articles. I thought I would put this subscription to use with this hospital article. A quick read of the history of hospitals shows that the Church did play a significant role in their development. The Wikipedia article is not as detailed, but does mention the Christian role.