CHAPTER XX
HOSPITALS AND MONASTERIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Long before the Christian era it was the practice among
the Greeks to make suitable provision for those who, by
reason of poverty or illness, were unable to provide for
their own wants or to secure the services of a physician.
Their slaves, for example, were sent, when overtaken with
illness, or when they had become too feeble to work, to
what was termed Xenodochia—institutions where they
received kindly care and such medical treatment as was
necessary. (Mommsen.) In strong contrast with this
humane practice stands the action of those wealthy Roman
property owners who, adopting the course recommended
by Cato, the famous censor (96-46 B. C.), "sold their slaves
when they became old and feeble or ill, as they would old
iron, or oxen that can no longer be utilized for work."
This cruel practice not only continued throughout a period
of nearly three centuries, but apparently became more
and more common, for we are told that the Emperor
Claudius (268-270 A. D.) was obliged, in order to mitigate
the evil, to issue a decree that, when a slave was driven
out of the house by his owner, he should be declared free.
Hospitals and Other Kindred Institutions.—Toward the end of the fourth century of the present era the first hospital was established in Rome by the widow Fabiola, a member of the distinguished Fabian family, and her example induced other wealthy Roman ladies to found similar institutions. But already several years before this time the influence of Christianity had made itself felt so strongly in the eastern branch of the Roman Empire that
