The mortality in some of the state hospitals from the latter part of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century was appalling, often as high as fifty and sixty per cent. This was due not only to shockingly unsanitary conditions, but also to inordinate overcrowding. A large proportion of the beds, incredible as it may seem, were purposely made for four patients, and six were frequently crowded into them. "The extraordinary spectacle was then to be seen of two or three small-pox cases, or several surgical cases, lying on one bed." John Howard, in his Prisons and Hospitals, pp. 176-177. Warrington, 1874, tells us of two hospitals that were so crowded that he had "often seen five or six patients in one bed, and some of them dying."
It is gratifying to learn that the chief agents in changing this revolting condition, due to faulty construction and management of hospitals, were women. Prominent among these benefactors of humanity were Mme. Necker, Florence Nightingale, and the wise and alert superiors of the various nursing sisterhoods.
[192] How like Chaucer's prioress who
"Was so charitable and so piteous,
And al was conscience and tender herte."
[193] Cf. Lib. de Virtutibus et Laudibus, by Ægidius, head physician to Philip Augustus of France, in which occur the following verses:
Urbs Phœbo sacrata, Minervæ sedula nutrix,
Fons physicæ, pugil eucrasiæ, cultrix medicinæ,
Assecla Naturæ, vitæ paranympha, salutis
Promula fida; magis Lachesis soror, Atropos hostis.
Morbi pernicies, gravis adversaria mortis.
quoted in the appendix, p. xxxii, to S. de Renzi's, Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Salerno, Naples, 1857.
[194] Cf. The introduction to the English translation of the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, p. 28, by J. Ordronaux, Philadelphia, 1870.
"Immortal praise adorns Salerno's name
To seek whose shrine the world once came."