Many were St. Louis' benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the Hotel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick poor were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The sick, after confession and communion, were to be put to bed and treated as if they were the masters of the house. They were to be daily served with food before the nursing friars and sisters, and all that they desired was to be freely given if it could be obtained and were not prejudicial to their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous the patient was to be set apart and to be tended with especial solicitude. The sick were never to be left unguarded and even to be kept seven days after they were healed, lest they should suffer a relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat twice a day: the sick whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a patient was excommunicated. Viollet le Duc was of opinion that in many respects the Hotel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 _cottes_ of white fur and 300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they were moved from their beds to the _chambres aisees_. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of the Renaissance made reform urgent, and in 1505 the Parlement appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_ to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636, but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Felibien, writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or country were set. Everybody was received, and in Felibien's time the upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hotel Dieu was situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in 1878.