Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/485

Rh three hospitals in Rome during his pontificate, and these were maintained and additional ones built by his successors. But Stephen II. surpassed his predecessors in the eighth century by restoring four ancient institutions and building three new ones.

The Arabs, speedily changing from a barbaric army to a cultivated and civilized people through their contact with Greek thought in the countries conquered by them, were not long in proving their enlightenment by the standard of hospital building. The first Arabian hospital was built at Damascus A.D. 707 by the Caliph el Welid. Virtually the real rise of Arabian science came with the accession to power of the Abbasides (A.D. 750). The Arab by this time was a mixed nation, in which the Persian element seemed to predominate. Hospitals under medical supervision were not uncommon, although infirmaries predominated. Nuburger states that infirmaries existed in no less than fourteen cities, including Bagdad, Antioch, Jericho, Medina, Mecca—in short, throughout the entire empire. The part played by pilgrimages to places of devotion among Christian nations in the evolution of the hospital was perhaps even more pronounced among the followers of Mohammed. Clinical teaching was done in several of the large hospitals of Damascus, special attention being given to medicine and diseases of the eye. The hospital, mosque and orphanage founded by al Munsur in the thirteenth century was one of the most notable Arabian charitable institutions and is said to have had a staff of forty-two physicians.

Probably the earliest hospital in France was the "Xenodochium" for pilgrims, established by King Childebert in the sixth century. The practise of making pilgrimages to the shrines and holy places was a custom of the pious coming more and more into vogue, and the monarch's action was a much-needed charity to the sick and weary travelers. The Council of Orleans (549) gave this establishment hearty approval.

Many hospitals arose in France during this and the succeeding century. For at just this period the Franklish empire, more than any other European country, was slowly tending toward the conditions which made it eventually a nation of city dwellers, dimly foreshadowing what came later with the establishment of industries, the foundation of guilds and the influence of trade and commerce on national life. At Autin, at Athis, at Paris, Aries and Rheims, we have records of the establishment of hospitals by kings, nobles and churchmen. The oldest hospital in the world still enduring, the famous Hôtel Dieu, is attributed to Landry, Bishop of Paris, and its origin has been variously placed between A.D. 660 and 800. Lallemand's "Histoire de la Charité" finds the first extant written mention of it in a document of 829. This began as a cathedral hospital, and was one of a group of institutions growing up about the old churches, which, developing into small