The Vilnians took care of the cleanliness and health responsibly already during the Grand Duchy of Lithuania times as the city had public bathhouses and one fourth of houses in Vilnius had individual bathhouses, also almost half of the houses had alcohol distilleries. In 1518, medicine doctor and canon Martynas Dušnickis established the first ''špitolė'' () in Vilnius, which was the first hospital-like institution in Lithuania and treated people who were not able to take care of themselves due to their health condition, age, and poverty. The Brotherhood of Saint Roch maintained primitive hospitals and shelters (''špitolė'') for the sick and the disabled in Vilnius from 1708 to 1799, although it is not known whether the brothers had any kind of medical education, it is known that the brothers hired paramedics, doctors, and surgeons, including women nurses who could take care of their female patients, and a significant number of its patients had sexually transmitted diseases (other Catholic hospitals refused to treat such patients), also the brotherhood sheltered pregnant women and their abandoned children, other patients sought help for injuries, tuberculosis, rheumatism, arthritis, etc. In 1805, the Vilnius Medical Society was established on the initiative of Joseph Frank (son of Johann Peter Frank), which was the first society of this type in Eastern Europe and to this day unites medicine doctors and professors in Vilnius. The same year, the society established a teaching hospital (clinic) under the Vilnius University Faculty of Medicine.