Health and Social Assistance in the archbishopry of Granada in the late 16th Century: A Hospital Record in the 1595 relatio ad limina

Abstract

The study of hospitals is presently a widely researched area, since it proved to be an extremely rich source of information, not only on the history of science, in general, and of medicine, in particular, but also, and above all, in regard to the analysis of society, especially of the social classes for whose study documents of other type are scarcely found. Firstly, in this article, we present a record of hospitals and subsequently make a few comments on their internal functioning and look into the groups assisted. For that purpose, we will resort to documents which have been seldom used and hardly valued in studies on hospitals, at least up to a few years ago: the so‐called relationes of the visits ad limina.