Before the birth of Christ hospitals were unknown. It is true that in Rome and Athens a certain provision was made for the poor, and largesses were given them from time to time. But this was done from motives of political expediency, and not from sympathy or commiseration with their ills. But as soon as the early Christians were free to practice their religion openly, hospitals arose in all the great cities. In the latter half of the fourth century the distinguished Christian teacher, Ephrem the Syrian, in Edessa, placed rows of beds for the sick and starving. His contemporary, Basil, the great bishop of Caesarea, founded a number of institutions for strangers, the poor, and the sick, caring especially for the lepers.[90] Little houses were built closely together, but so that the patients could be separated one from another, and cared for separately. Even at that early date the hospitals were arranged into divisions for either sex, as they are at the present time. To use a modern phrase, the wards of the men patients were placed under the charge of a deacon while the deaconesses ministered to the sick of their own sex, according as their services were required. "It was a rule for the deacons and deaconesses to seek for the unfortunate day by day, and to inform the bishops, who in turn, accompanied by a priest, visited the sick and needy of all classes."[91] In the Middle Ages there were orders of Hospitallers, consisting of laymen, monks, and knights, who devoted themselves entirely to the care of the sick. Under their influence great and splendid hospitals were built, of which the old Hotel Dieu in Paris was a conspicuous example. The Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Rome, and the service of the same order, originated like hospitals all over Europe. In late years, with the development of medical and surgical art, hospital arrangements have arrived at a degree of perfection never before known; and the care of the sick, as it has been studied and practiced by Protestant deaconesses and Catholic Sisters of Mercy, has also greatly improved.