MARRIAGE OF CHARLES LE BEL AND MARIE OF LUXEMBURG.
Grandes Chrons. de France, Bib. Nat.
To face page 100.
It almost takes us aback to read that in Mahaut’s domain of Artois there were at least eighty hospitals and thirty lazar-houses, without counting those attached to the monasteries. But these numbers will not surprise us so much when we remember that almost every small community had its little hospital, used not only for the sick and as a lying-in hospital, but also as a shelter for the poor and the pilgrim. In the towns they were often built and supported by the Corporations or by rich merchants. Evidently some were in the nature of hospitals for incurables, for there were special clauses in the deeds of gift providing that a certain specified number of beds were to be kept for the sick until they were either cured or released by death. Besides building two hospitals in the County of Burgundy in fulfilment of the dying wishes of her husband, Mahaut built and maintained two in her own County of Artois. The one at Hesdin was the more important, and we can get some idea of it from the documents of the time. The deed relating to it tells that over the large entrance gate there was carved in stone a figure of St. John, the patron of hospitals and of the needy generally, with a poor man and woman on either side of him. The principal ward was 160 feet long and 34 feet wide, with walls 16 feet high ending in a gabled roof, with two windows in each gable, and this, coupled with the fact that the sick were sometimes laid on cushions by the open windows, goes to show that what we pride ourselves on as a special discovery in modern hygiene—the benefit of fresh air—was known and applied even in what we are wont to consider a very benighted age in such matters.
Whilst touching upon such a subject as this, it may be a surprise to some to learn that in large towns baths were provided for those who could not afford to have them in their own homes, and that there were also professional women hair-washers.
THIRTEENTH-CENTURY TREATISE ON SURGERY, IN FRENCH.
Sloane MS. 1977.