Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Valetudinarium

（νοσοκομεῖον). A room set apart for the reception and treatment of sick slaves—a sort of domestic hospital and infirmary (Col.xi. 1, 18; De Ira, i. 16). There were also military hospitals attached to the Roman camps; but there is no mention of public hospitals before the fourth century (Hieron. Epist. iii. 10). The nearest approach to a public hospital in Greece was the dispensary (ἰατρεῖον) of the physicians who treated the poor gratuitously and received a fixed salary from the State. See Daremberg, Hist. de la Médecine, ch. i.; and the articles Medicina; Medicus.