There are many allusions in the New Testament concerning the healing of the sick, and Christ himself commanded his disciples to care for the ill and indigent. The practise of hospitality was enjoined as a virtue upon the early Christians; bishops, presbyters and deacons were especially obliged to practise this virtue and references to it are found in the Acts and most of the early commentaries. These documents tell us that in the bishop's house was a room set apart for the use of poor and ill travelers, designated as the hospitalium, or rest room. Harnack[1] states that the bishop was also required to act as a physician. In this hospitaliun, therefore, in name as well as in function, we find the legitimate, though remote, ancestor of the modern hospital.
The many epidemics occurring in the Soman empire, as the epidemic of Carthage in A.D. 252, described by St. Cyprian,[2] gave those who would care for the sick abundant employment. Many a wealthier Christian imitated the bishop's good example and established a hospitalium in his own house. But, hunted and persecuted as the sect was, there could be no organization of this work; their efforts must remain desultory and scattered until the ban was removed. So it is that the advent of the public hospital comes after the reign of Constantine, when a great increase in the number of Christians and the spread of poverty had made adequate individual effort by the bishops difficult if not impossible.[3]
More than one writer has asserted that hospitals originated from three supposedly antagonistic influences, religion, war and science. This statement is not true for several reasons, but chiefly because history is opposed to it. There was plenty of fighting in pre-Christian days, but hospitals did not result from it. The Greeks had far more scientific knowledge than the Goths, yet the former did not build hospitals, while the latter did. Indeed, the real situation is outlined if we say that in the social ebullition produced among the nations of Europe by the introduction of Christianity, hospitals were the distillate and war and science the by-products.
The Christianity of the Lombards, the Goths and the Franks was a militant one. Scarcely had Clovis, the Frankish king, renounced his old gods than he commenced a holy war upon his unorthodox neighbors with the twofold object of converting them and obtaining dominion over their lands. In the dream of empire of the first great Charles the sword and the cross were close companions. Yet these early Frankish monarchs in the intervals between their wars were earnest in the building of hospitals. Long indeed after the hospital made its
