Per una storia dei luoghi dell’esercizio medico nell’antichità: dagli Asclepieia ai monasteri

The article deals with the places of medical art in the antiquity. Author's intention is to give a description of the places where developed the assistance and welfare activity to sick people from the Asklepieia to Monastic Hospitals. In Theurgical Medicine the cure for sickness was peculiar to gods, at first to all gods, mostly to Apollo and Artemide; later healing art had an own god: Asclepius. In the temples of Asclepius, the Asklepieia, prayers, sacrifices, offerings and magical rituals began to be associated with medical practical exercise and rational therapeutic systems. Rational Hippocratic Medicine found own places in the cities: the iatreia in Greece and the tabernae medicae in Rome. The article tries to describe the evolution of social welfare assistance from the Roman Valitudinaria to the monastic xenodochia and the first forms of Religious Hospitals.