Terms used in Byzantium for nursing personnel

It has been long recognised that Byzantium was the cradle of hospital care. Most of the hospitals, called Xenones, were annexed to monasteries. The nursing staff were either volunteers or paid personnel. Professional nursing personnel were used for the first time in Byzantium hospitals. Many terms were used to describe the personnel in these hospitals and this paper identifies these nursing personnel from Byzantine sources and provides definitions of their duties: deaconesses (diakonisses), ministers (ypourgoi) and ministresses (ypourgisses), nurses (nosokomoi-nosileftes), auxiliary nurses (paranosokomoi), hoteliers (xenodochoi), excubitors (exkoubitores), phlebotomists (phlebotomoi), parabolani (parabolaneis or parabalaneis), scribones and deputati (skrivones and depotatoi), and midwives (maies). The paper further demonstrates that for the first time hospital personnel were divided into categories; hospital administration was exercised by specialist personnel, the nosokomoi.