Even by modern standards the hospital in Jerusalem was quite large; Master Roger des Moulins in a letter of 1178 puts the number of patients at 950. According to the statutes of 1182, the medical staff consisted of four physicians and a number of male nurses. Special regulations were laid down concerning hygiene. A wise rule was that each patient, after admittance, should hand over his valuables to the hospital authorities so as to prevent protests and reclamations in case of loss or theft. A religious in charge registered all the belongings of a patient and gave them back after he was dismissed. The statutes of the hospital in Jerusalem served as a model for, and sometimes were literally copied by, other hospital organizations in the Middle Ages.[5] In view of the fact that before the crusades hospitals in the more modern sense of the word hardly existed, the charity work of the Knights of St. John—and to a lesser extent that of the other orders founded in the Holy Land—has been hailed as a kind of innovation. Historians agree that the Hospitallers must be credited with having created the hospital in the organized sense. Whenever the knights of St. John had to transfer their Convent, they considered it one of their first duties to attach to it a well-equipped hospital for “our lords the sick.” The hospital in Rhodes, restored by the Italian government under Mussolini to its original condition, was a large and beautiful building. On Malta the hospital or “Sacra Infirmeria” developed into a center for medical sciences, particularly surgery and ophthalmology. The militarization of the order had a double effect. Knights from every country in Europe enrolled under the red banner with the white cross. At the same time the military reputation of the order greatly increased the number of donations and legacies which had been given already at the time the order was devoted to charity work. These possessions scattered throughout the Near East and Europe called for administration and management. Although the supervisory system was very complicated and only gradually developed, it may be said in general that the order was divided in bailiwicks and priories which were roughly equivalent to provinces in other orders and each priory comprised a number of commanderies. The house of a commander might be a manor, a castle, a walled-in-portion or a fortified church with an annex. Each house contained, besides the chapel and the living quarters for the household, a number of rooms, to be used as a ward for travellers and as a hospital for sick pilgrims.[6] The functions of the priors and commanders were manifold: they collected the revenues of the estates of the order, they gave protection to the pilgrims, occasionally they built or maintained roads and bridges and their “mansiones” were recruiting stations for the order. When the days of the great pilgrimages were over, several hospices of St. John grew into regular hospitals.