Very early in Christianity care for the ailing poor was taken up, and hospitals in our modern sense of the term became common in Christian communities. There had been military hospitals before this, and places where those who could afford to pay for service were kept during illness. Our modern city hospital, however, is a Christian institution. Besides, deformed and ailing children were cared for and homes for foundlings were established. Before Christianity the power even of life and death of the parents over their children was recognized, and deformed or ailing children, or those that for some reason were not wanted, were exposed until they died. Christianity put an end to this, and in two classes of institutions, the hospitals and the asylums, abundant opportunity for observation of illness was afforded. Just as soon as Christianity came to be free to establish its institutions publicly, hospitals became very common. The Emperor Julian, usually known as the Apostate, who hoped to re-establish the old Roman Olympian religion, wrote to Oribasius, one of the great physicians of this time, who was also an important official of his household, that these Christians had established everywhere hospitals in which not only their own people, but also those who were not Christians, were received and cared for, and that it would be idle to hope to counteract the influence of Christianity until corresponding institutions could be erected by the government. From the very beginning, or, at least, just as soon as reasonable freedom from persecution gave opportunity for study, Christian interest in the medical sciences began to manifest itself. Nemesius, for instance, a Bishop of Edessa in Syria, wrote toward the end of the fourth century a little work in Greek on the nature of man, which is a striking illustration of this. Nemesius was what in modern times would be called a philosopher, that is, a speculative thinker and writer, with regard to man's nature, rather than a physical scientist. He was convinced, however, that true philosophy ought to be based on a complete knowledge of man, body and soul, and that the anatomy of his body ought to be a fundamental principle. It is in this little volume that some enthusiastic students have found a description that is to them at least much more than a hint of knowledge of the circulation of the blood. Hyrtl doubts that the passage in question should be made to signify as much as has been suggested, but the occurrence of any even distant reference to such a subject at this time shows that, far from there being neglect of physical scientific questions, men were thinking seriously about them.