Who shall take care of our Sick?
We have taken occasion, in recent numbers of The Catholic World, to present to our readers several of the works of charity which appeal most strongly to Christian sympathy and ask for Christian aid. In our articles on "The Sanitary and Moral Condition of the City of New York"—as but one, however, out of the many cities of our land with like evils and like needs—we directed attention to some lamentable features of the situation of the poor in our midst, and especially of the many thousands of poor and vagrant children growing up in neglect and consequent ignorance and vice. The kindred matter of the condition and proper treatment of the inmates of our jails, prisons, and penitentiaries was touched upon in our last, under the head of "Prison Discipline;" and, again, that of the poor and unfortunate subjects of mental ailments in the article on "Gheel, a Colony of the Insane." In the present number, we invite attention to another branch of the subject, suggested by the inquiry at the head of this article, "Who shall take care of our sick?"
By the sick, we mean all who by infirmity of body or mind are incapable of taking care of themselves; for the range of our inquiry embraces the helplessness of infancy, of decrepitude, insanity, and idiocy, and extends even to prisoners and criminals.
By our sick, we mean the sick poor, the duty of providing for whom devolves on collective society.
But as what is everybody's business is nobody's business, and as society, however imperfectly organized, has many distinct organs and recognized functions corresponding; it remains to be determined through what special ministry the suffering members of humanity shall be succored and the erring reclaimed.
If the rich, and those whose social combinations have been successful, are succored in their need by their families, their friends, their servants; who constitute the families, the friends, the servants, of the poor and isolated? This is a question which pagan societies have evaded, or insolently answered, Vae victis! Religion alone, and only in so far as Christ's spirit has penetrated mankind, has given, through its orders of charity, a fair and candid answer—an answer in deeds as well as words. For many centuries in Christendom, this answer appeared satisfactory in its spirit and intent. Not even the insane were left out of the Christian fold—witness the Colony of Gheel—and it only remained to extend, and multiply, and perfect the works of charity, in proportion as science and art added to the resources of society.
But the Protestant "Reformation" came, sweeping away the work of pious ages, confounding uses with abuses, and upset the whole administration of charity by the servants of Christ, along with public and religious hospitality: in changing the privileged orders, it confided to secular hands the doling out of such pittance to the destitute as the fear of insurrection compelled, and still compels, from the reluctant economy of self interest.
A revival of Christianity in Protestant countries now opens the public mind to the horrors and crimes against humanity perpetrated, in the name of charity, in their "work-houses," "alms-houses," hospitals, and asylums; it leads to the recall and renewal of religious orders devoted to the care of the sick and other classes needing charity. This has not been merely a brilliant corruscation, like the rescue which Florence Nightingale carried to the British troops in the Crimea. Miss Nightingale had previously been trained for years in the religious order of the Kaiserwerth, a normal school of nurses, and the movement, inaugurated by her, continues in England as the "Institution of St. John." A number of religious works, of high merit and extensive usefulness, are described among the Charities of Europe, by De Liefde. [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Published by Strahan: New York and London.]
In New York, we have the Hospital of St. Luke, ministered to by pious Episcopal ladies, who, like the Soeurs Grises of mediaeval Europe, take no vows, and may marry, yet for the time being perform the same functions as our Sisters of Charity or of Mercy.
While attesting a tendency in Christendom to recover the ground lost by the "Reformation," such institutions as we have cited are still very trivial in numbers and power; and though small appropriations of public funds have been made to them, neither they nor the principles which they represent have been officially recognized by states or cities. There is, on the contrary, a jealous opposition to admitting, even to the service of the sick poor, who are mostly Europeans and Catholics, as at Bellevue, the Sisters of Charity; and one of its most eminent surgeons, who knows by experience how precious is their aid, has declared to us with regret his conviction that this salutary measure could not pass. To obviate the prejudices that withhold the administration of charity from its own votaries, whose noble emulation would utilize the differences of sect or order for the common good; to show that the State will find in this restoration economy, at the same time with social or moral advantages, while Christ will be more worthily served; to make it felt that the burden of human sorrows will be lightened, and the redemption of our race from evil promoted, by re-allying piety with charity, is the purpose we have now in view.
"Suum cuique tribuito," "Give to each his own." Two chief orders of power exist in society—interest and sentiment. The natural sphere of interest is confined to material property or goods of the senses; that of sentiment embraces the relations of persons, that is, of beings considered as hearts and souls; so that sentiment culminates in devotion, and ranges love and consanguinity, friendship and honor, in the ministries of religion, expanding the selfhood of the individual by the consciousness of his solidarity with the race, and through Christ with our Father in heaven.
Still, practically, the functions of each power are distinct. It is admitted, in regard to the divers organizations of fire companies, for instance, that the payment of fixed salaries is an efficient or adequate motive for the protection of houses. This service was once confided to public spirit; there was no lack of heroic devotion in its exercise; but salaried firemen were found to be more amenable to discipline, and their organizations to be more permanent and reliable. Now, the contrary is true of hospital service and kindred functions, which employ in some places the religious orders of charity, in others hired assistants. Physicians, patients, and inspectors, all proclaim the superiority of the former. Visit our great secular establishments, such as Bellevue or the Charity Hospital, where the service is either hired or compulsory by convicts, and then the hospitals of religious orders, even the poorest, such as that of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, which is supported by begging from door to door, not to mention the more richly endowed hospitals of St. Vincent de Paul or St. Luke, all free to every needy patient: scent the air of the wards, share the food of the refectory, feel the human magnetism of these spheres, take time and mood to appreciate all their conditions, and you will find their difference amount to a contrast in many essentials of hygiene, physical as well as moral, although science is impartially represented at the secular as at the religious establishments. The former have been largely endowed by private and public benefaction; energy, ability, and good will are not wanting among their officers; yet they inspire such aversion that the decent poor will often rather perish than resort to them.
The characteristic superiority of religious charities is historical, and remounts to the earliest epochs of Christendom; although the secular interest of states in the health and contentment of their peoples has been the same in all times and all countries. If their conduct has been different, the reasons of this difference may be found in the nature of their religions and the fervor or torpor of their piety.
Conversely, just in proportion as our modern states alienate their "public charities" from the influence of religion, they become perverted by the same cruelty and heartlessness that characterized the behavior of the pagan world toward its unfortunate classes. Between the philanthropy of the English workhouse and that of Rome which sent poor slaves to perish on the "dismal island" in the Tiber, the shorter course seems preferable to us, because less degrading to the soul of the victim, and because it has the courage, at least, of its crime.
The Emperor Maximianus, who shipped a cargo of beggars out to sea and drowned them, was still more complete in this economy of suffering. Disease and misery, decrepitude and helpless infancy, have each in turn become the object of such elimination, which ignores tenderness toward the individual; but the process has never stopped where it might have been justified, in a manner, by the substitution of healthier and stronger or more perfect, for less perfect individuals among the representative types of the species. No; the same spirit that sacrificed the feeblest, revelled in the destruction of the strongest men in its gladiatorial arenas. Even in the restricted sense of patriotism, which had contributed so many devotions on the altar of the country, in the heroic days of Greece and Rome, solidarity had ceased to be matter of practical conscience in the pagan world of the great empire. The Hebrews had developed it only as a tribal and family principle. Where has it ever been a social life-truth, unless in the fold of Christ's disciples? and where has this been practically organized, except by its religious orders?
The inconsistencies of war excepted, we see life and personal liberty becoming more sacred from age to age, even amid the corruptions of advanced civilization in Christendom; whereas, on the contrary, in pagan civilizations "the springs of humane feeling in every ancient nation, like the waters of the fountain of the sun, were warm at dawn of morning, but chilled gradually as the day advanced, till at noon they became excessively cold."
When the development of intelligence in civilized communities renders them conscious of needs and of resources outlying the circles of family providence; one of their first Christian movements is to care for their disabled members, stricken by disease or wounds from the army of the working poor.
In our monster cities, the hospital acquires gigantic proportions, and political economy meets humanity in the research for a system which shall afford the greatest mitigation of inevitable suffering and the best chances of restoring the sufferers to social uses.
In this research, charity has anticipated experimental science, and to the religious orders belongs the honor of fulfilling the highest ideal of this sacred function.
The organization of hospitals contains for modern civilization and for cosmopolite New York problems of the highest practical import, which especially interest the Christian church.
What has been hitherto effected under the social pressure of extreme necessity, whether to avert the generation and diffusion of pestilence, or the shame of allowing millions of the poor to perish in their squalid misery, is still painfully inadequate to meet the needs of humanity at points where Europe disgorges her miseries upon America. New institutions are annually struggling into existence to supply this demand. Among the most important by their social and religious nature are those of the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis, which may serve as a type of what we would urge concerning the superiority of piety and charity—those daughters of the Christian church—over secular calculations, in this work.
Few, small, and poor as are the hospitals of this order in America, they shine by the spirit which animates them, by the naked purity of their Christian faith, and its works, that confront the world now, precisely as they did eighteen hundred years ago. [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9: This order of the "Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis" has been introduced already into several of our larger cities, and with much promise of success. Houses of their order exist in Cincinnati, in Brooklyn, in Hoboken, and elsewhere, and, more recently, have been established here in New York.
If they shall have the wisdom—the church's wisdom of old and of all time, and the spirit which has always animated and characterized her workings—to adapt themselves to the country, to its needs and requirements, to its speech, and (so far as compatible with piety) to its habits and customs, they will doubtless receive vocations, will grow in numbers, will be able to accomplish much in alleviating the sufferings of humanity, and will do no small share of the great work of bringing the Catholic Church rightfully before the American people.
We subjoin the following deserved tribute to their house here in New York, which we find in the Evening Post, of August 13th.:
"Saint Francis Hospital.
"To the Editors of the Evening Post:
"I venture to affirm that at least nine tenths of the good people of this great city are entirely ignorant of the existence of the Hospital of Saint Francis in our midst. Indeed, with my long and generally intimate knowledge of the various benevolences of the city, I was not at all aware of this institution, until a kind lady who has been a warm friend of the House of Industry acquainted me with the fact a few days since, and in her company I had the pleasure of visiting the hospital. For several reasons I beg your permission to say a few words about it in the Evening Post.
"It is located on Fifth and Sixth streets, between Avenues B and C, being the two brick dwellings Nos. 407 and 409 Fifth street, and the one immediately in the rear of No. 173 Sixth street. It is under the care of the 'Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis,' and is a free hospital for both sexes, without distinction as to creed, and its inmates comprise Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. The means for purchasing this property were obtained by the solicitations of the sisters from door to door. I think the order of Saint Francis originated in Germany, where it still has its headquarters. Most of the sisters here are German, though there are certainly one or two exceptions. The accommodations are altogether inadequate, and not at all well adapted to the purposes. The patients are cheerful and happy, and there is every evidence that all the efforts of these sisters arise from the most pure and unselfish motives, and that there is not the least constraint in regard to religious matters resting upon the inmates. There is a very small chapel in the establishment, the attendance upon which is wholly voluntary. The commonest services are performed by the sisters, and, Puritan Protestant as I was educated, I could but admire the devotion and kindness of these women. I believe their charity is a true and unselfish one; that they are animated by his Spirit who went about doing good, and they should be well supported in their work.
"The patients are of all ages and nationalities, perhaps a more than usual average of Germans. I was particularly interested in two of the wards, one for the 'grandfathers' and the other for the 'grandmothers,' both of them filled with quite aged people. Many of the patients seemed to be incurables, and have a permanent home in the Saint Francis. The good sisters have secured a large plot of ground on which they purpose erecting a building of much greater capacity than those they now occupy, and thoroughly adapted to the objects of the institution. For this object they will need large contributions, which I earnestly hope will be promptly furnished. The following is a general summary of the past year:
| Number of patients treated in Hospital, (males, 484; females, 108) | 593 |
| Discharged, cured or improved | 423 |
| Died | 88 |
| Remaining December 31, 1867 | 81 |
"I have written out this simple statement, because it is always pleasant for me to commend all right agencies working for the comfort of the sick poor, and because, comparatively isolated as these women are, they have special claim to sympathy and assistance; and also, because they are Catholics, I am glad of an opportunity to show that Protestants can appreciate what is good, no matter who originates it.
"S. B. Halliday."
(End Footnote 9)]
Arrogant, imposing, and splendid in Broadway, the lusts of power and greed which the poor world now serves show the reverse of the picture in the indigent swarms which vegetate a little way east from First avenue. Passing from the hot-beds of luxury and their exhaustive reactions of improvident misery, enter the Hospital of the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis, on Fifth street, near Avenue B. Its extreme neatness in the midst of squalor, its sweetness amid corruptions, atmospheric and social, its severe simplicity of self-renunciation, shaming the complex artifices of our cupidity, its devotion so consistent, so persistent, as the stream of charity ascends toward its fountain-level in the heights of faith; all smite upon the heart with the manifest presence of Jesus. Its inmates attest with a grateful enthusiasm the kindness there lavished upon them. The voices of prayer and praise consecrate the wholesome food to bodily uses; the sweetness of fellowship in Christ pervades all its relations and dignifies the humblest offices. Here are no hired nurses; life-devotion supplies all. The iniquities of civilization or the discrepancies between the soul's ideal and the world's possible, may defeat nature's fondest intentions of personal destiny in love and maternity for individual lives; but as "the stone which the builders rejected, the same shall become the head of the corner," so the career of charity opens to all who live in Christ a higher sphere of espousals and of motherhood, pure from the dross of selfishness.
One who observes the practical working of this institution must soon be convinced that it possesses neither time nor inclination for other arts of proselyting, than the attractive emanations of a glowing, earnest life of love and duty. Fourteen sisters support and care for more than a hundred patients, and even add to the domestic and ward service that of the pharmacy. The patients receive daily visits from a physician and a clergyman. "We know," say the sisters, "that, when the body is sick, the soul suffers, and that spiritual consolation often does the body more good than the best medicines." Books are provided for those able and willing to read. Attendance at the chapel is optional. There are regular services on Sunday. The patients are of diverse creeds, as of diverse nations. This hospital is often preferred by Protestants, and even by Jews; for those who suffer go where they find hearts to sympathize with and hands to help them. They see that the poor sisters have nothing for their labors but their simple food and clothing. More is not allowed by the rules of their order, that they may the more disinterestedly apply themselves to the care of the poor and suffering sick, the support of whom and other expenses of the institution depend upon the daily collections and labors of the sisters themselves." (Report for 1867.) This noble ignorance of all distinctions of creed and sect is the common attribute of the Sisters of Charity. Those who serve the Hospital of St. Vincent de Paul, an older and wealthier charity than that of the Sisters of St. Francis, one of the most creditable, indeed, in our country, open its doors alike to sufferers of all denominations.
In regard to the matter of practical economy and saving to the state, from placing its hospitals, and other like institutions, under the care of the religious orders, we are permitted to give the following extract from a letter from a Catholic lady of Cincinnati:
"The only public institution we as yet have which is supported from the public purse is the prison, managed by the Good Shepherds. In his annual report, the mayor always praises their economy and excellent management, but he has never had the magnanimity to publish the thousands annually saved, in comparison with the old régime. Their salaries are fixed at $100 a year for six sisters—$600, which is $100 less than the pay of a single policeman. The sisters have the entire management of the prison. The Harris School is in full operation. The house can receive no more than about fifty-five. Colonel Harris, the founder, a Protestant, always expresses his surprise at the little outlay. Our own experience shows an immense economy, as well as superior moral influence in the effects of our charities, so beneficial in softening the hearts of the poor."
We may here take occasion to remark that a religious order affords guarantees of honest administration in a higher degree than any individual can do by his personal responsibility. The legal security, or values pledged, may be equal; but in one case there is at stake only a business responsibility, in which it is often regarded as smart to outwit a committee of inspection; while, on the other hand, corporate honor is involved, and the officer entrusted with funds is doubly responsible to the committee of inspection, and to the order of which he or she is a member, under the more extended affiliation of the church.
Moreover, the discipline of the religious orders is very rigorous on the chapter of economies, and there are not by any means the same opportunities or temptations for an officer to divert funds from public to private uses. The inspectors themselves will often be Protestants.
It behoves us to examine the use of hospitals in the general system of humanitary functions. The hospital is a corollary of the city. The city is a gland or glandular system of elaboration for the social and intellectual secretions of humanity—arts, sciences, and refinements. But the advantages of the city are obtained only by great sacrifices; among which is the separation of great numbers of persons from their local and family attachments, obliging them to derive their subsistence from industries more precarious than those of rural life. More wisdom being required to direct one's course in the complex relations of the city, more are bewildered, misled, overwhelmed; vast and powerful currents of crime and of waste are generated, and restorative measures are needed to counteract them. Now, the necessity of cities and that of hospitals being admitted, how, let us ask, can this kind of help be rendered, this sort of duty performed, so as most worthily to attest the principle of human solidarity, so as to benefit most the recipients of charity, to honor most the organs by which charity is rendered, and so secure the best kind of service in this arduous function; finally, how best to economize the resources of collective society in the adaptation of means to ends?
First, let us consider the expediences of public charity, especially in reference to the persons or characters of its organs.
The best interest of society demands that there shall be a place for every one, and every one in his place; or, in other words, that as specific vocations are inherent to each type of character, so that use should be allotted to each for which nature supplies the aptitudes, and which it embraces with ardor.
The attractiveness of certain functions< or the aversion occasioned by them, has very little to do with the impression they make on the senses of a party indifferent. The cares required by an infant, for example, which excite maternal zeal in all its plenitude, appear simply tedious and disgusting to most men. So it is with the care of the sick, in which science and affection find powerful attachments insensible to others, who, good in other ways, feel no vocation for it. Finally, and beyond all special vocations, there is the enthusiasm of devotion, the religious instinct to which Christianity appeals, which it awakens in many souls, and which it justifies in affording to it the highest spheres of use. The contemplative idealist may try to escape the normal limitations of his nature in vague aspiration; but Jesus has provided against this Brahminic perversion by the culture of charity, in identifying the love of God with the love of the neighbor, and himself with the least of mankind. "As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." (St. Matthew xxv. 40.)
We do not suppose that Christianity endowed human nature with philanthropy as a new passion; it gave this aspect, this evolution, this modality, to what had been patriotism for the heroic states of Rome, of Greece, and other nations, which had always sought, and sometimes found, a social channel, but which Christianity more fully satisfied in the theory and practice of unity.
There have always been developed, in proportion with the industrial progress of civilization, wants extraordinary without being fantastic. Such are the cares of illness. The wisdom of Christian charity has adapted to these extreme wants vocations equally extreme, in the devotion of religious orders; and this duty has devolved especially upon the female sex, because it is better gifted than the male for the ministry of compassion.
It is feasible, moreover, for religious orders to accept as well the penitent as the virgin; and shaming the world's intolerance, to rescue from sin and disgrace a lower world of souls, whom passion or imprudence had otherwise ruined.
There is no depth of crime, indeed, from which its subjects may not be rescued by charitable labors; and in proportion as their organization is extended and perfected, legal as well as simply moral offences may find here at once their prevention and their expiation. The brothel and the penitentiary, those two institutions of hell on earth, may thus be countermined, and the means of redemption afforded to their victims. The salutary influence which the discipline of charitable works exerts over mental and moral aberrations, may even reclaim not a few of the insane, or those who, under ordinary circumstances, are drifting fatally toward the lunatic asylum.
That extraordinary virtue which the impulse and exercise of active benevolence has in developing the soul and awakening its latent powers from torpor, may appear from the following incident lately observed at Mr. Bost's, in Laforce, Dordogne:
One day a poor girl, deaf, dumb, blind, paralytic, and epileptic, was brought to Bethesda. "It required some courage," says the narrator, Mr. De Liefde, "to fix one's eyes on that miserable creature, with her dried-up, contracted limbs, her repulsive face, the features of which were constantly contorted in the most hideous manner. Well, an idiot took charge of that child, guarded and nursed it, and stood by its death-bed to administer to it the last solace of love! And such was the indefatigable care and even intelligent thoughtfulness with which she tended her poor helpless charge that Mr. Bost said, 'When I lie on my death-bed, I shall count it a blessing to be nursed in this way.' I do not wonder at such hearts being able to understand what is the meaning of the simple sentence, 'God loveth you,' long before the intellect is able to catch the difference between two and three; nor can I be surprised at what Mrs. Castel told me, that the same children who do not know whether a shoe ought to be on the foot or on the head, or who, if not prevented, would, like beasts, walk on all fours and lick the dirt, may yet sometimes be heard ejaculating, 'Mon Dieu! prends pitié de moi. J'en at bien besoin.'
"Long before they could catch the idea of shifting a piece of wood from the right hand to the left, they gave evidence of being pleased by an act of kindness, and of being grateful for a benefit bestowed on them.
"In the year 1854, a girl who was a perfect idiot stood, one day, in Mr. Bost's lobby. The aspect of the hideous-looking little creature was so sickening that Mr. Bost could not permit her to be taken into the establishment, but still less could he send her away. If ever there was a subject for compassionate, saving love, it was here. The power of prayer and the perseverance of charity could now be put to the test. Mr. Bost resolved to keep the girl in his own house. The doctors declared it perfect folly. During three months, all his efforts to strike a spark of intellect out of this flint proved a total failure. But one evening, at worship, while the hymn was being sung, he heard an articulate and harmonious tone proceed from the brutishly shaped mouth. The child evidently tried to put its voice in accord with the sounds which it was hearing. Mr. Bost is a musician, and at once applied his talent to the benefit of his unhappy pupil. Under the softening and cheering influence of harmony, it was affecting to see how, first with painful struggles, and then, with growing ease, the mind of the child emerged from the dark deep in which it had been confined. By little and little, the idiot succeeded in uttering articulate sounds, then in uniting them into syllables, and finally into words. At the same time, her health improved visibly, her nervous system became less irritable, her face assumed more and more a rational expression. She began to show joy and surprise when receiving something that was agreeable to her. Then tokens of gratitude and of affection followed. In short, after a lapse of two years, the idiot had disappeared to make room for a child which appeared to be behind but a few years only, when compared with other children of her own age. At present, that same child, formerly beneath the level of the brute, speaks well, sews, and knits, and might be the teacher of children less sunken in idiocy than herself when she first set foot on Mr. Bost's threshold."
Such was the spirit and such the conduct which determined mediaeval Europe to entrust the religious orders with vast landed possessions, and with these the whole care of the poor, of the sick, and of the wayfarer, duties which they discharged with greater satisfaction to the people than any secular aristocracy of privilege known in the records of history.
"For the uncertain dispositions of the rich, for their occasional and often capricious charity, was substituted the certain, the steady, the impartial hand of a constantly resident and unmarried administrator of bodily as well as spiritual comfort to the poor, the unfortunate, and the stranger."
Now, still the question presses, whether, instead of confiding our sick to hired nurses, we shall not invite the willing sisterhood to extend their organization among us, and sustain them in this devotion. It is well ascertained that none can make a thousand dollars go so far as they can in the service of their sick.
It is notorious in America, that public works undertaken by the government are generally ill done and very wastefully. Hence, common sense excludes the government from enterprises of internal improvement, and confides them either to individuals or companies, without hesitating thus to create privileged orders and to favor a moneyed aristocracy.
To have a great work well done, passions as well as interests must be engaged in it; personal character, pride, and ambition, as well as skill and capital; and where many persons must co-operate, there is no guarantee of harmony in action and of successful result so sure as that corporate zeal which religion employs with so much power, and which religion alone can bring to bear. This is indeed a holy fire, enkindled and kept alive upon objects of charity, that purges away dross.
If the Catholic Church has in all ages conducted her enterprises with the greatest success, it is because she has known how to enlist the greatest number of motives, the strongest and the best. On the other hand, it will be readily confessed that the great public hospitals under secular control do not even bring into play the common levers of interest which secure results in the management of railroads, of hotels or banking-houses, nor those of ambition, which animate the army and navy. Charity, as a secular business, is always poorly paid, rendered grudgingly, distastefully, and so as to excite aversion. Many will rather die than have recourse to it. It always carries with it a certain stigma of inferiority and contempt. No personal character or corporate zeal is identified with it, still less can there exist that unison of feeling and of effort which places the seal of the divine humanity on such institutions as those of the sisters. We transcribe from one of the most remarkable works of modern travel, The Pillars of Hercules, by David Urquhart, his impression of the last remaining hospitals of the religious order in Spain. Let us note that Mr. Urquhart is an Englishman and a Protestant:
"The Hospicio of Cadiz is at once a poor-house and a house of industry, a school, a foundling hospital, a hospital, and a mad-house; that is, it supplies the places of all these institutions. It is imposing in its form, embellished in its interior, and as unlike in all its attributes and effects as anything can be to the edifices consecrated to the remedying of human misery, by our own charity and wisdom.
"Hospital De La Sangre, (Seville.)
"This is a noble edifice, composed of several grand courts and of two stories; the lower one for summer, and the upper one for winter. I think I may say that to each patient is allotted at least four times as much space as in any similar European establishment, and the very troughs in which the dirty linen is washed are marble: the patients have two changes of clean linen in the week. The kitchens are all resplendent with painted tiles and cleanliness, and there seemed abundance of excellent food. In these institutions, in Spain, the inmates are completely at home. Soft and blooming girls, with downcast look and hurried step, were attending upon the poor, the maimed, and the suffering. The lady-directress had told the servant who accompanied me to bring me, after my visit, to her apartment, which was a hall in one of the corners of the building; she said she had heard that England was celebrated for its charity, and asked if our poor and sick were better off than in Spain. I was obliged to confess that the reverse was the case. She asked me if it was not true that we hired mercenaries to attend on the sick, and abstained from performing that duty ourselves; and if our charity was not imposed as a tax? She told me that there were eight hundred of her order in Spain; that it was the only one that had not been destroyed; that none were admitted but those of noble birth or of gentle blood; and that they took all the vows except that of seclusion, and in lieu of it took that of service to the poor and sick. The Saint Isabelle of Murillo was the model of their order. The Hospital de la Sangre was founded by a woman."
Mrs. Jameson [Footnote 10] pays a just tribute to the Hospital Lariboissière, in Paris, "a model of all that a civil hospital ought to be—clean, airy, light, lofty, above all, cheerful. I should observe," she says, "that generally in the hospitals served by Sisters of Charity, there is ever an air of cheerfulness, caused by their own sweetness of temper and voluntary devotion to their work. At the time that I visited this hospital, it contained six hundred and twelve patients, three hundred men and three hundred and twelve women, in two ranges of building divided by a very pretty garden. The whole interior management is entrusted to twenty-five trained sisters of the same order as those who serve the Hôtel Dieu. There are, besides, about forty servants, men and women, men to do the rough work, and male nurses to assist in the men's wards under the supervision of the sisters. This hospital was founded by a lady, a rich heiress, a married woman too. She had the assistance of the best architects in France to plan her building, while medical and scientific men had aided her with their counsels."
[Footnote 10: Sisters of Charity, Protestant and Catholic.]
In the General Report on the Condition of the Prisons of Piedmont, to the Minister of the Interior, we find this paragraph:
"It is an indisputable fact that the prisons which are served by the sisters are the best ordered, the most cleanly, and in all respects the best regulated in the country. To which the minister of the interior adds: Not only have we experienced the advantage of employing the Sisters of Charity in the prisons, in the supervision of the details, in distributing food, preparing medicines, and nursing the sick in the infirmaries, but we find the influence of these ladies on the minds of the prisoners when recovering from sickness has been productive of the greatest benefit, as leading to permanent reform in many cases, and a better frame of mind always; for this reason, among others, we have given them every encouragement.
"Among the other reasons alluded to, the greater economy of the management is a principal one. It is admitted, even by those who are opposed to them, that, in the administration of details, these women can always make a given sum go further than the paid officials of the other sex. Their opposition to the sale of wine and brandy to the prisoners, except when prescribed by the physicians, is also worthy of note.
"One of the directors of the great military hospital at Turin told Mrs. Jameson that he regarded it as one of the best deeds of his life, that he had recommended and carried through the employment of the Sisters of Charity in this institution. Before the introduction of these ladies, the sick soldiers had been nursed by orderlies sent from the neighboring barracks, men chosen because they were unfit for other work. The most rigid discipline was necessary to keep them in order, and the dirt, neglect, and general immorality were frightful. Any change was, however, resisted by the military and medical authorities till the invasion of the cholera; then the orderlies became, most of them, useless, distracted, and almost paralyzed with terror. Some devoted Sisters of Charity were introduced in a moment of perplexity and panic; then all went well—propriety, cleanliness, and comfort prevailed. No day passes, said this director, that I do not bless God for the change which I was the humble instrument of accomplishing in this place. Very similar was the information received relative to the naval hospital at Genoa.
"Another excellent hospital, that of St. John, at Turin, contained four hundred patients, male and female, besides its ward for sick children, and two for the bedridden and helpless poor, the whole being under the management of twenty-two religious women with forty-five assistants, and a large number of physicians and students. All was clean, neat, and cheerful. I was particularly struck by the neatness with which the food was served; men brought it up in large trays, but the ladies themselves distributed it. There was a little dog with its forepaws resting on one of the beds and its eyes steadfastly fixed on the sick man, with a pathetic, wistful expression, while a girl knelt beside him, to whom one of the sisters was speaking words of comfort.
"In this and other hospitals is an excellent arrangement for the night-watch. It was a large sentry-box of octagon shape, looking each way, the upper part all of glass, but furnished with curtains, and on a table were writing materials, medicines, and restoratives, linen napkins, etc. Two sisters watched here all night; here the accounts were kept, and privacy secured, when necessary, for the ladies on duty.
"The Marchese A——, one of the governors of the Hospice de la Maternité, described to us in terms of horror the state in which he had found the establishment when under the management of a board of governors, who employed hired matrons and nurses. At last, in despair, he sent for some trained sisters, ten of whom, with a superior, now directed the whole in that spirit of order, cheerfulness, and unremitting attention which belongs to them.
"We cannot," he said, "give them unlimited means, for these good ladies think that all should go to the poor; but if we allow them a fixed sum, we find they can do more with it than we could have believed possible, and they never go beyond it; they are admirable accountants and economists.
"In the great civil hospital at Vienna, larger even than the Hotel Dieu of Paris, the Sisters of Charity were being introduced some twelve years ago when Mrs. J. visited it.
"The disorderly habits and the want of intelligence in the paid female nurses had induced the managers to invite the co-operation of the religious sisters, though it was at first against their will. In the Hospital of Saint John, at Salzburg, the same change had been found necessary.
"At Vienna, I saw a small hospital belonging to the Sisters of Charity there. Two of the sisters had settled in a small old house. Several of the adjoining buildings were added one after the other, connected by wooden corridors. In the infirmary I found twenty-six men and twenty-six women, besides nine beds for cholera. There were fifty sisters, of whom one half were employed in the house, and the other half were going their rounds among the poor, or nursing the sick at private houses. There was a nursery for infants whose mothers were at work; a day-school for one hundred and fifty girls, in which only knitting and sewing were taught, all clean, orderly, and, above all, cheerful. There was a dispensary, where two of the sisters were employed in making up prescriptions, homoeopathic and allopathic. There was a large, airy kitchen, where three of the sisters, with two assistants, were cooking. There were two priests and two physicians. So that, in fact, under this roof, we had the elements, on a small scale, of an English workhouse; but very different was the spirit which animated it.
"I saw at Vienna another excellent hospital for women alone, of which the whole administration and support rested with the ladies of the Order St. Elizabeth. These are cloistered. All sick women who apply for admission are taken in, without any questions asked, so long as there is room for them. I found there ninety-two patients, about twenty of whom were ill of cholera. In each ward were sixteen beds, over which two sisters presided. The dispensary, which was admirably arranged, was entirely managed by two of the ladies. The superior told me that they have always three or more sisters preparing for their profession under the best apothecaries, and there was a large garden principally of medicinal and kitchen herbs. Nothing could exceed the purity of the air, and the cleanliness, order, and quiet everywhere apparent."
Let us remark certain features in these last two examples:
1. The possibility of recreation by a timely change of labors, as from the hospital to the school, or to the garden, etc.
2. The economy, and guarantee of genuineness, afforded by the culture and pharmaceutic preparation of medicinal herbs.
3. The unison of action, by fulfilment of sanitary functions by members of their own body.
"It was admitted on all sides in England, when investigations were held on the office of hospital nursing, that the general management of our hospitals and charitable institutions exhibited the want of female aid such as exists in the hospitals abroad— the want of a moral, religious, intelligent, sympathizing influence combined with the physical cares of a common nurse. Some inquiry was made into the general character of hospital nurses, and the qualifications desired, and what were these qualifications? Obedience, presence of mind, cheerfulness, sobriety, forbearance, patience, judgment, kindness of heart, a light, delicate hand, a gentle voice, a quick eye; these were the qualities enumerated as not merely desirable, but necessary in a good and efficient nurse—virtues not easily to be purchased for £14 10S. per year! (or hired at $14 a month in New York [Footnote 11])—qualifications, indeed, which, in their union, would form an admirable woman in any class of life, and fit her for any sphere of duty, from the highest to the lowest. In general, however, the requirements of our medical men are much more limited; they consider themselves fortunate if they can ensure obedience and sobriety, even without education, tenderness, religious feeling, or any high principle of duty. On the whole, the testimony brought before us is sickening. Drunkenness, profligacy, violence of temper, horribly coarse and brutal language—these are common, albeit the reverse of the picture is generally true. The toil is great, the duties disgusting, the pecuniary remuneration small, so that there is nothing to invite the co-operation of a better class of nurses but the highest motives which can influence a true Christian. At one moment the selfishness and irritability of the sufferers require a strong control; at another time their dejection and weakness require the utmost tenderness, sympathy, and judgment. To rebuke the self-righteous, to bind up the broken-hearted, to strengthen, to comfort the feeble, to drop the words of peace into the disturbed or softened mind just at the right moment; there are few nurses who could be entrusted with such a charge, or be brought to regard it as a part of their duty. To this social function corresponds the Sister of Charity, as defined by St. Vincent de Paul, an ideal so often fulfilled in life and action.
[Footnote 11: This is the salary of orderlies at Bellevue Hospital, where the duties are often so arduous that one attendant would be quite inadequate to the care of twenty beds but for the aid rendered by patients to each other. The night-watch passes but once in two hours.]
"Can any one doubt that the element of power, disunited from that of Christian love, must, in the long run, become a hard, cold, cruel machine, and that this must of necessity be the result where the masculine energy acts independently of the feminine sympathies?
"All to whom I have spoken, without one exception, bear witness to the salutary influence exercised by the lady nurses in the Crimea over the men. In the most violent attacks of fever and delirium, when the orderlies could not hold them down in their beds, the mere presence of one of these ladies, instead of exciting, had the effect of instantly calming the spirits and subduing the most refractory. It is allowed, also, that these ladies had the power to repress swearing and coarse language, to prevent the smuggling of brandy and raka into the wards, to open the hearts of the sullen and desperate to contrition and responsive kindness. 'Even when in an apparently dying state,' writes one of these illustrious nurses, 'they would look up in our faces and smile.'"
Dr. H. R. Storer, of Boston, has recently put forth a little book entitled Nurses and Nursing, etc., abounding in suggestions which may some day be utilized in a hospital more liberally endowed and more elaborately organized than anything which now exists, and in which he mentions, with the highest regard, the Hospital of the Sisters of St. Francis, in Boston, 28 Sansom street. The doctor does well to dedicate his humane aspirations for a perfect system of nursing to the sisterhood. From what zeal less earnest, less intelligent, less refined, or less holy, can we ever expect to find music and flowers, birds, landscape views, the varied resources of luxury in nature and society, made tributary to the service of the sick?
A worthy servant of our Master, Mr. Bost, of Dordogne, the founder and administrator of several important charitable institutions, having among them departments for the hygienic treatment of epilepsy, scrofula, consumption, and idiocy, one of whose cures we have cited, remarks:
"The best physician, under God, is Nature. I never visit the hospitals in our great cities without a feeling of distress. What, then, you ask, is wanted? Are the patients not cared for? Are there no able medical men, no remedies, no order, no cleanliness, no wholesome and abundant nourishment? No doubt there is plenty of all that. I have with admiration accompanied the medical men on their morning visits. Everything art could contrive for restoration to health was applied; yet the cure was slow, attended with horrible pains, and the case often terminated in death. I will tell you what was wanting—the country air, the fragrance of the flowers and of the earth, the hues of morn and eve, the sunbeams, the harmony of nature, the carol and warbling of birds, so adapted to cheer hearts broken by suffering, and to which no other recreation is offered than the sight of rows of beds upon which sufferers are sighing and groaning from morning till evening and from evening until morning."
"It is amazing," writes Mr. Liefde, "to witness the cures which simply by the application of natural hygiene, have been effected at the establishments of Laforce: Consumption of the lungs, in an advanced stage, has quite disappeared in some cases, hysteria in others; amputations are prevented; a girl sent away from a hospital as incurable from hip disease is enabled to walk well. The invalids are occupied in the fields or the garden; they go into the stable and see the cattle; they are in sight of the works of creation so adapted to raise their thoughts to God, who is love, even when his hand presses heavily upon them."
If one wish to witness the healing power of the Gospel over both body and soul, he can do no better than to spend a week at Laforce.
In conclusion, we would urge it, as a matter of high policy, duty, and right, upon the church of Christ, to reclaim, as fast and as far as its means will allow, its primitive position in regard to the administration of charities in general, and of hospitals in particular; for we believe it to be the only social organ adequate to these humane uses. Science cannot remain neutral, and the trustees, the wardens, orderlies, nurses, the cooks, and all the persons employed in the hospital service, should be brothers and sisters of one and the same order, the voluntary subjects of the same rule, all pervaded by the same religious sentiment and corporate spirit, while friendly rivalries obtain between the different institutions.
Translated From Le Correspondant.