This attack of mania appears to have been one of great violence. In general, with regard to mental maladies, the more excessive the alienation, the more easily it ceases. It is said that, in the midst of the blows inflicted on him, he took avow “to receive poor madmen, and treat them as is fitting.”
When the nervous exacerbation was calmed, he employed himself in attending on the sick, and, later on, obtained his liberty, and a certificate attesting his sanity. Having made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, he started barefoot, without a farthing, in the middle of winter. On his way through the forests and across the moors, he picked up dry sticks and made them into a faggot, which, when he reached an inhabited place, he gave in exchange for a little food and a night’s lodging.
It is said that, when he reached Guadalupe, he had a vision which exercised a decisive influence on him. The Virgin appeared to him, and gave him the Child Jesus, naked, with clothes to cover him. This was to show him that he ought to have pity on the weak, shelter the destitute, and clothe the poor—at least such was his interpretation. His mission dates from that day, and he executed it with so much the more zeal, as he believed it to have been laid upon him by the Virgin whom he adored.
Dressed in a white garment, which an Hieronymite monk had given him, with a wallet on his back, and a pilgrim’s staff in his hand, he returned to Oropesa, and went to lodge in the poor-house.
The misery of the inmates so touched him, that he went outside the city, begged alms for them, and gave them all that he received. Later on, he took to selling faggots in the public square, gave to the poor and sick all that he gained, and slept in stables, through the charity of their owners.
One day, having seen a notice posted up in the square, “House to let for the poor,” he conceived the idea of making it into an asylum. Having begged money from the rich, with which he bought mats, blankets, and utensils, he received and sheltered forty-six sick and crippled paupers. In order to maintain them, he went about the streets at the dinner hour, to collect from the rich the remnants of their meals, crying, “Do good, my brethren; it will return in blessing to yourselves.”
Juan de Dios’ example provoked emulation; several men offered themselves to help him. He instructed them in their new duties, and thus became the head of a group, which, by multiplying, has become the great congregation now in existence.
The resources now put at his disposal permitted him to treat the sick, “as is fitting.”
It is worthy of attention that Juan de Dios was a reformer in the manner of treating the sick, only placing one patient in each bed. He was the first to divide the sick into classes—he was, in short, the creator of the modern hospital, and the founder of casual wards; for he opened, in connection with his hospital, a house where the homeless poor and travellers without money could sleep.
It was at this period that he took the name of Juan de Dios. The good done by him did not remain unknown, and the name of Juan de Dios, father of the poor, was spread abroad through Spain. Profiting by this, he made a journey as far as Granada, and returned with abundant contributions.