Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/268

 the Emperor Julian, who had previously been among its most bitter opponents, was forced to say, in one of his letters:—

Now we can see what it is that makes these Christians such powerful enemies of our gods; it is the brotherly love which they manifest toward strangers and toward the sick and the poor, the thoughtful manner in which they care for the dead, and the purity of their own lives.

Moved by these considerations, he decided forthwith to erect hospitals in all the cities of the empire. We do not know whether he acted upon this resolution or not, but it is a matter of record that St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea (370-379 A. D.), founded in that city, which is about thirty miles distant from Jerusalem, a settlement composed of numerous dwellings that were devoted to the use of the poor and the sick. This institution was managed in an admirable manner, a special corps of physicians and nurses being assigned to the duty of caring for its inmates. At Edessa, the capital of Northern Mesopotamia, another hospital was founded in 375 A. D. The date of the establishment of the celebrated hospital at Djondisabour in Persia, of which mention is made elsewhere (see page 204 et seq.), is not known. About the middle of the sixth century of the present era, Childebert I., King of the Franks and son of Clovis, founded at Lyons, France, the Hôtel-Dieu, a hospital which has afforded shelter and comfort to thousands of human beings during the past fourteen hundred years, and which is in active operation at the present time; a hospital, too, which has served as a training school for a long line of distinguished physicians, surgeons and gynaecologists. It is an interesting fact that Childebert intrusted the management of this great institution to laymen (instead of the ecclesiastical powers). Finally, toward the end of the sixth century, Bishop Masona founded in Merida, Spain, a hospital in which Jews, slaves and freemen were received and treated on the same footing; and he laid down the rule that one-half of the moneys and other gifts received by the church was to be devoted to