Nazianzen is found urging Julian the Apostate
to imitate, by the building of hospitals
and travellers' rests, the Christians whom he
ridiculed. And, at nearly the same time,
Basil the Great speaks of the early Christians
as having developed the hospital-system into
completeness, and regards it as an institution
quite peculiar to themselves.

This Basil, Metropolitan of Cappadocia,
himself founded, about the year three hundred
and eighty, a general hospital, called the
Basiliad; which was, among the hospitals of
its day and all time before it, what Saltaire
is in our time to the English factories. Its
situation was before the gates of its founder's
episcopal seat, Cæsarea. The Basiliad was
richly endowed by the Emperor Valens; and
others arose on its pattern in the Morea,
and in other districts of the Eastern Church.
Twenty years after the completion of the
Basiliad, John Chrysostom erected a great
general hospital in Constantinople, spending
upon it and the other smaller hospitals a part
of his own substance, as well as the superfluous
riches of the Church. It is at about the
same time—in the year four hundred and
one—that we first read of lunatic asylums,
which were then founded by monks, in the
wildernesses of Bithynia.

Many of the earliest hospitals were
intended principally for the exercise of
hospitality towards poor travellers—after the
meaning of our St. Cross, or Sutton's
Charity, at Rochester. Some were for
rich travellers, who also needed solace on
the road. Towards the close of the sixth
century, Bishop Bertichramnus built a
hospital for poor nobles, and another for both
rich and poor when on their travels. Another
bishop, Aldricus, built a hospital for travelling
bishops, counts, and abbots, and another for
the poor, sick, blind, and lame. In the eighth
century we find laymen at work. In Lucca
alone there were then three hospitals founded
by burghers, and the German residents there
were establishing, for their own countrymen,
a fourth.

The earliest known foundling hospital was
established in the year seven hundred and
eighty-seven, at Milan. The first approach
to a hospital for crippled soldiers was that
made in one of the most famous early hospitals,
the great orphan asylum of the Greek
Emperor Alexius Comnenus, founded in the
year one thousand and ninety. Of this his
learned daughter, Anna Porphyrogenita,
testifies that it equalled a small town in size,
and that the enormous host of poor cherished
therein did not consist wholly of orphans;
the place being also a refuge open to
others who required support, especially the
blind, the dumb, the lame. It was also,
in express terms, open to decrepit soldiers
—noble foreboding of our Invalides and
Chelseas!

These bishops were at first the managers of
hospital affairs; but, as the sphere of
episcopal duties and ambitions widened, they
devolved this care upon deacons, who became
hospital-masters; so that at last, says Thomassinus
writing on Church discipline, diaconate
and hospital became almost synonymous.
The early popes distinguished themselves by
founding many such charitable diaconates.
In the time of Anastasius Bibliothecarius (the
ninth century), there were twenty-four of
them in Rome. The cardinals afterwards
got these, and fattened on their funds.
During a Iong period, fourteen cardinal-
deacons, named from chapels on the site of
the abolished hospitals, Santa Maria in Via
Lata, Santo Giorgio in Velabro, etcetera,
have had the opportunity of pocketing the
money of the poor.

Isolated divines first held office as hospital-
masters in the provinces; but as the monastic
system grew, it, by degrees, absorbed the
hospitals into itself. The vows of poverty,
the religious functions, the knowledge, the
abundance of leisure, and the numbers of
monks gathered under one roof, made it
appear both wise and natural to entrust
them with the nursing of the sick and the
attendance upon poor afflicted people in
the hospitals. There even arose orders
of monks and nuns—hospital brothers and
sisters—vowed especially to hospital
attendance.

The Crusaders brought into Europe the
leprosy of the East, and gave rise to the building
of leper—afterwards pest—houses. By the
beginning of the seventeenth century they had
fallen into disuse, but the number of ordinary
hospitals had increased largely. According to
their nature they had learned names, dating
generally from the time of Justinian, and from
the names we know how various in nature
they had always been. The almshouses were
ptochotrophia; if asylums for the old,
gerontocomia; for children or orphans,
orphanotrophia; for foundlings, brephotrophia. If
they entertained and lodged strangers or
pilgrims they were xenodochia; if for the
lodgment of the sick, nosocomia. Plague-
houses had the military name of Lazarettos
from the hospitals of St. Lazarus, in which
the outcast lepers, called Lazari, were received
and tended by brothers of the order of St.
Lazarus of Jerusalem. There were even
medical and surgical, and lying-in and lunatic
hospitals; long since there existed also
hospitals for curables or incurables, and for
special complaints, as diseases of the chest or
small-pox.

We have cared only to speak of the birth
of the Hospital System. Its modern growth
may be traced in the familiar histories of
such foundations as the Hôtel Dieu at Paris,
or of Saint Bartholomew's and Thomas's in
London. Saint Bartholomew's dates from
about the close of the period to which we
have been now referring. In the year one
thousand one hundred and two, it was
founded as a sick hospital in connection with