Hospitale, in cloisters, the place of shelter for strangers, whether rich or poor; thus equivalent to our hotel, the Xenodochion of the Greeks, the Hospitium of the Romans. The hospitalia of the Romans correspond with our inns. They were small erections on the right and left of the main house. In Greece, a person who had done any great public service might be rewarded with money and provisions, but he required to look after a place of abode himself. Bearing some resemblance to our present hospitals were the public buildings for the aged women of Delos, built on the island called Rhene; and those buildings which, at a later period, were erected near the temple of Æsculapius, for sick persons coming in search of health. It was possibly a similar institution which Antoninus built at Epidaurus. Another appears to have existed on the island of the Tiber at Rome, to which sick slaves were brought to be healed. Bethesda (house of mercy), with five porches, was a place in Jerusalem to which the sick were brought to await the moving of the waters. Also the Taberna Meritorum at Rome appears to have been an hospital for invalids.

Hospitals for the poor and sick are prominently characteristic of Christianity. So early as the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, they are spoken of as commonly known. The first celebrated hospital was that of Cesarea, A.D. 370-380, richly endowed by the Emperor Valens. It was of immense dimensions. After it followed the hospital of Chrysostom, at Constantinople. In the ninth century there were 24 hospitals in Rome alone. A founding hospital was first established at Milan, A.D. 787; a lazaretto about the same time in Constantinople; and an orphan hospital in the same city, A.D. 1090, by Alexius I.

Hospitals are now universally established in all parts of Christendom, and appropriated for all classes of the community, and for all kinds of diseases. The great hospitals of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, &c., are described under these towns respectively.