 Leprosy arrived in Paris after the Crusades, due to the contacts with the infected areas in the eastern Mediterranean and the movements of population.By 1124, King Louis VII established a large leprosarium in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.Between 1254 and 1260, Louis IX built a special hospital for three hundred poor blind patients near the Porte Saint-Honoré on the Wall of Charles V. In 1363, the corporation of merchants of Paris founded a home for poor orphans, the Hospice du Saint-Esprit, on the Place de Grève.