Hospital of the Innocents in Valencia (hospital for the mentally ill)
Hospital de los Inocentes de Valencia (hospital para enfermos mentales)
- Date
- 1409-1410 · confidence high
- Place
- Valencia, Valencian Community, Spain
- Credited to
- Joan Gilabert Jofré (Order of Mercy) and the city's confraternity
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A hospital founded in Valencia around 1410 after the preaching of the Mercedarian friar Joan Gilabert Jofré, to take in, care for and protect the “mad and innocent”. Chroniclers regard it as the first institution specialised in the mentally ill in Christian Europe.
“First” is limited to Christian Europe: there were already bimaristans with wards for the mentally ill in Baghdad, Fez or Cairo, and Bethlem (London) housed the mentally ill from the 14th century. The real therapeutic scope of the centre, as opposed to mere confinement, is debated.
What it led to
- hospitals for the insane in Zaragoza, Seville, Valladolid and Toledo during the 15th century
- institutional rather than purely charitable care of mental illness
- a model for the madhouses of the Spanish Monarchy