Why did hospitals originate with Christianity?
Albert: For centuries people became sick, but before the advent of Christianity there were no hospitals to nurse and heal them. The Greeks and Romans had physicians, and even some hospices for shelter, commonly near Aesculapia or iateria (shrines where the sick came for medical advice), but they had no place for the sick to recuperate, to receive medical nursing and rest. This all changed when St. Basil in Cappadocia (a bishop in the East), moved by Christ’s words, “I was sick and you looked after me,” built the first hospital in A.D. 369. It consisted of several buildings, housing physicians, nurses, and rehabilitation units. In 375, Fabiola, a wealthy widow, built a hospital in the West. By the end of the fourth century hospitals appeared in numerous places. By the sixth century most of the monasteries also had hospital facilities. During the Crusades (twelfth and thirteenth centuries) numerous hospital orders arose, such as the Order of Hospitalers, Knights of Malta, Hospitalers of
