Hospice care had its origin in Europe during the medieval period when physicians acknowledged the inevitability of death and the need to acknowledge a dying patient’s spirituality.
The first hospices are believed to have originated in the 11th century, when for the first time the terminally ill were permitted into places dedicated to treatment by Crusaders. In the early 14th century, the order of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem opened the first hospice in Rhodes. The hospice practice languished until revived in the 17th century in France by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and, later, by the Irish Sisters of Charity, who opened St Joseph's Hospice in London, England in 1902. In the 1950s at St. Joseph's, Cicely Saunders developed many of the foundational principles of modern hospice care. She later founded St Christopher's Hospice in London.