Neak Poan Temple

This guide to Neak Poan Temple in Siem Reap follows one of Jayavarman VII's twelfth-century hospitals, staffed not by physicians but by directors, compounders and water-heaters, treating fever, skin disease and troubled minds alike. It traces the four animal-head spouts, elephant, horse, lion and human, each once feeding a pool matched to a different ailment, and the naga serpents whose knotted tails gave the island its name. The surviving horse statue in the main pond still marks where patients once stepped into the water.