munities, formed the nucleus of many of the larger cities of the feudal period. Undoubtedly of much earlier origin was the Hospital Scothorum, which was built on the continent at a remote period by missionary Irish monks. This was destroyed and later was restored by order of the Council of Meux (A.D. 845). These were probably the same monks who founded the monasteries of Bobbio and St. Gall, and carried the art of illuminating manuscripts as well as the gospel itself to the semi-barbarous peoples beyond the Alps.
The idea of medical missionary work is not a new, but a very old, idea. Barbarous Europe was converted by medical missionaries; practically all of the monasteries of the monks of the west did hospital work.
This monastic influence reached its zenith in the tenth century, and the most famous hospital-monastery of that day was the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, founded in 910, and commanding not only a local reputation, but famed through Italy and France.
Originally each monastery had its infirmary for inmates, and this under the laws of hospitality was open to sick travelers. Before long the crying need of medical aid extended the ministrations of the infirmary to the people of the neighborhood, or to any who might seek it. The monastery was the repository of medical as well as all other written knowledge of that period, and it has been proved that among the profane authors copied by the monks in their scriptoria were some of the classical authors on medicine.
We must not imagine that the cathedral hospital languished during the preponderance of monastic medicine; according to Virchow, 155 hospitals were founded in Germany alone from 1207 to 1577. With the growing importance of the hospital it is no surprise to find religious communities springing up whose chief and surpassing occupation was to be the care of the sick. The first of these was organized in Siena, a cradle of Italian genius, during the ninth century. Soror, the founder of the hospital of Santa Maria de la Scala, drew up the rules for its administration with his own hands. The management was largely in the hands of citizens, subject to the bishop's control. Many such communities were established in Italy and lived under the rule of St. Augustine.
From this time onward the religious orders strongly influenced hospital development. In the twelfth century the Beguines and Beghards were hospital orders which flourished especially throughout Belgium, France and Germany, while the Alexians and Antonines established and managed hospitals in various parts of Italy as well. Leprosy following in the wake of the crusades, special communities were formed to care for lepers. Thousands of leper houses arose in all parts of Europe—it is estimated that 2,000 existed in Germany alone. The plague was eventually stamped out, an achievement in a public health
