The names of some of these institutions became associated with that of Edward VI. about the middle of the Sixteenth Century. For this, however, there was no proper justification, since, at most, all that was accomplished within the reign of the boy king, was the reestablishment of institutions formerly in existence which had been confiscated under the laws of Henry VIII., but the necessity for whose existence had been made very clear, because of the suffering entailed upon the many ailing poor by the fact, that in their absence there was nowhere for them to go to be cared for. As Gairdner points out in his History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century, "Edward has left a name in connection with charities and education which critical scholars find to be little justified by fact." The supposed foundation of St. Thomas' Hospital was only the reestablishment of this institution, and even when it was granted by him to the citizens of London, this was not, as Gairdner says, "without their paying for it."
How much all this hospital movement owes to Innocent III. will be best appreciated from Virchow's account of the German [{341}] hospitals, the great German Scientist not being one of those at all likely to exaggerate, the beneficent influence of the Popes, he says:
"The main cause decisive in influencing and arousing interest of the people of the time in the hospitals of the Holy Ghost was the Papal enthusiasm in the matter. The beginning of their history is connected with the name of that Pope, who made the boldest and farthest-reaching attempt to gather the sum of human interest into the organization of the Catholic Church. The hospitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means by which Innocent III. thought to bind humanity to the Holy See. And surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not calculated to create the most profound impression, to see how the mighty Pope who humbled emperors and deposed kings, who was the unrelenting adversary of the Albigenses, turned his eyes sympathetically upon the poor and sick, sought the helpless and the neglected on the streets, and saved the illegitimate children from death in the waters. There is something conciliating and fascinating in the fact that at the very same time at which the Fourth Crusade was inaugurated through his influence, the thought of founding a great organization of an essentially humane character to extend throughout all Christendom, was also taking form in his soul; and that in the same year (1204) in which the new Latin Empire was founded in Constantinople, the newly erected hospital of the Santo Spirito, by the Old Bridge across the Tiber, was blessed and dedicated as the future center of this universal humanitarian organization."
HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY GHOST (LÜBECK)
Virchow, of course, considers Innocent's action as due to the entirely interested motive of binding the Catholic world to the Holy See. Others, however, who have studied Innocent's life even more profoundly, have not considered his purpose as due to any such mean motive. Hurter who wrote a history of Pope Innocent III., the researches for which he began as a Protestant with the idea that in the life of this Pope better than anywhere else the pretensions of the papacy could be most effectively exposed, but who was so taken by the character of the man that before he completed his history he had become a Catholic, looks at it in a very different way. Even Virchow himself quotes [{342}] Hurter's opinion, though not without taking some exceptions to it. Hurter said with regard to charitable foundations in his history of Pope Innocent III.: "All benevolent institutions which the human race still enjoys, all care for the deserted and needy through every stage of suffering from the first moment of birth to the return of the material part to earth, have had their origin in the church. Some of them directly, some of them indirectly through the sentiments and feelings which she aroused, strengthened and vivified into action. The church supplied for them the model and sometimes even the resources; that these great humanitarian needs were not neglected and their remedies not lacking in any respect is essentially due to her influence upon human character."
With regard to this Virchow says that hospitals had existed among the Arabs and among the Buddhists in the distant East, "nevertheless," he adds, "it may be recognized and admitted, that it was reserved for the Roman Catholic Church and above all for Innocent III., to establish institutions for the care of those suffering from diseases."
A corresponding hospital movement that received considerable attention within the Thirteenth Century was the erection of Leproseries or hospitals for the care of lepers. Leprosy had become quite common in Europe during the Middle Ages, and the contact of the West with the East during the Crusades had brought about a notable increase of the disease. It is not definitely known how much of what was called leprosy at that time really belonged to the specific disease now known as lepra. There is no doubt that many affections which have since come to be considered as quite harmless and non-contagious, were included under the designation leprosy by the populace and even by physicians incapable as yet of making a proper differential diagnosis. Probably severe cases of eczema and other chronic skin diseases, especially when complicated by the results of wrongly directed treatment or of lack of cleansing, were sometimes pronounced to be leprosy. Certain of the severer forms of what is now known as psoriasis—a non-contagious skin disease—running a very slow course and sometimes extremely obstinate to treatment, were almost surely included under the diagnosis of leprosy. Personally I have seen [{343}] in the General Hospital in Vienna, a patient who had for many months been compelled by the villagers among whom he lived to confine himself to his dwelling, sustained by food that was thrown into him at the window by the neighbors who were fearful of the contagiousness of his skin disease, yet he was suffering from only a very neglected case of psoriasis.
There is no doubt, however, of the existence of actual leprosy in many of the towns of the West from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth centuries, and the erection of these special hospitals proved the best possible prophylactic against the further spread of the disease. Leprosy is contagious, but only mildly so. Years of association with lepers may and usually does bring about the communication of the disease to those around them, especially if they do not exercise rather carefully certain precise precautions as to cleanliness, after personal contact or after the handling of things which have previously been in the leper's possession. As the result of the existence of these houses of segregation, leprosy disappeared during the course of the next three centuries and thus a great hygienic triumph was obtained by sanitary regulation.