Basil's hospital at Caesarea

In 369 Cappadocia, in what is now central Turkey, suffered a famine that Gregory of Nazianzus called the most severe ever recorded there. Basil, a monk and priest who later became a bishop, gathered the hungry of Caesarea and fed them soup and meat, and he preached against the wealthy who hoarded while the poor died of sickness and starvation. The feeding grew into a complex of buildings just outside the city.

A letter placed in 372, addressed to Elias, governor of the province, answers people who had complained about it. Basil lists a church, a house for the bishop and lodgings for the clergy, and asks whom he harms by building a place for strangers, both travelers and those who need medical treatment for sickness, with physicians, doctors, transport and escort. The residents were to learn trades, and building materials were already being gathered. In two letters of 373 to Bishop Amphilochius, Basil calls the place a ptochotropheion, a Greek word for a house of the poor or the sick, beside the city, and invites him to its church.

Gregory, Basil's lifelong friend, described this new city in his funeral oration for Basil. Lepers had been driven from their cities, homes, public places and fountains and even from their families, he said; now they were cared for, and Basil himself greeted them as brothers and went to tend them. Gifts from the wealthy paid for the work. The complex may also have housed orphans.

Whether it was the first hospital depends on the definition. Roman valetudinaria treated sick or injured slaves and soldiers for their owners and legions, and the temples of Asclepius expected sacrifices or gifts and rarely had physicians. Thomas Heyne, writing in Hektoen International, applies Andrew Crislip's test of beds for patients, professional carers and free care, and names the Basiliad the first hospital. When Caesarea itself later fell into ruin, the settlement around Basil's foundation survived and grew into the modern city of Kayseri.