The majority of our brethren in their love for their neighbors did not spare themselves, but acted as a unit in their efforts to assist. They visited the sick without the slightest fear and gave them the very best of care, for the sake of Christ.... Among the non-Christians, however, the very opposite was true. As soon as any of their number fell ill they pushed them to one side, even those who were dearest to them, and, before they were more than half-dead, they threw them out into the street and took no care to bury the dead bodies. Such an example of self-sacrifice and humanity--and there must have been very many similar examples--could not possibly have failed to make a profound impression upon the community at large. Daniel Le Clerc says that three physicians suffered martyrdom for their Christian faith during the reigns of the Emperors Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus and Commodus. They were Papila (of Pergamum), Alexander (of Lyons) and Sanctus (a contemporary of Galen), whose death was of a particularly cruel character. Credit should also be given to Christianity, says the same writer, for having established the rule that every community should assume the expense and responsibility of caring for its own poor and sick. This was a step of the greatest importance; and, at a still later period, when Christianity became largely an affair of the state, a complete hospital organization was effected, with the bishop as the chief officer and, under him, deacons and deaconesses. Such well-organized institutions proved to be of the greatest possible benefit to the advance of medical science. They were the worthy successors of those more ancient hospitals, the Aesculapian temples, which were first established by the Greeks in the pre-Hippocratic age, and they have continued in an unbroken chain from the institutions of those primitive times to the thoroughly well-equipped hospitals of the present day.