"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.
Kaulbach And The Era Of The Reformation.
[Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Kaulbach's picture of the Era of the Reformation now being on exhibition in this country, a republication of the above article from the pages of our French contemporary has seemed to us not inopportune.—ED. C.W.]