Christ's Hospital

“ But the hospital, of course, is managed on the broadest lines. It is open to men of all creeds; there is no religious test of any kind; and if the patient objects to the Gospel it is not forced upon him. ”

“ There is in hospitals an opportunity of extraordinary importance, a field of great fruitfulness which is largely neglected. If the hospital is a missionary hospital, founded to heal the souls as well as the bodies of men, ought not the patients in them to be taught as well as medically treated? ”

“ Men forgot this later and the disease became a serious problem once more in all the hospitals of even a generation ago. The hospital organization worked out by these university men is the finest jewel in the crown of their accomplishment as applied scientists. Pope Innocent III, himself a University of Paris man, founded the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome, summoning for that purpose the best authority on hospitals in Europe, Guy of Montpellier, and then required the bishops of the world to erect similar hospitals in their dioceses. ”

“ In the best conducted hospitals the only misconception that is likely to remain is the belief that the missionaries as a body are trying to win a high place in Heaven by savabs. This dies very hard, and all we can say is that the hospital system, perhaps partly by its more definite discipline, tends to eradicate it. ”

“ Notwithstanding this, he has been perfectly frank in confessing how much is accomplished by the religious management of the hospitals, and even did not hesitate to declare that if hospitals for the poor particularly, are to be successfully managed, there must be a change in the view-point of those who take up the work of hospital nursing, and the attendants must come from better social classes than is at present the custom. ”

“ Idols are false.'"
In addition to the morning services Christian work is constantly done by the Bible women who work in connection with the hospital. They hold meetings in the hospital wards, teach the hospital patients to read the Bible, do personal work among those waiting their turn in the dispensary, and visit in the homes. One of the missionaries who is a frequent visitor to the hospital says: "No hour of the week brings more fully the joy of service than the hour I spend in the City Hospital with the poor sick folk there. They are always so glad to hear, and so responsive. ”

“ It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful if we to-day surpass it. It was isolated, the ward separated from the other buildings, it had the advantage we so often lose of being one story high, and more space was afforded each patient than we can afford.
Now as to the management of these medieval hospitals. In the monasteries the superintendency was in the hands of the abbot or prior and the institution was subject to monastic rule. Even in the privately endowed hospitals practically all the hospital attendants were members of some religious community. ”

“ Good surgery demands good hospitals, and indeed inevitably creates them. Whenever hospitals are in a state of neglect, surgery is hopeless. We have, however, abundant evidence of the existence of fine hospitals in the Middle Ages, quite apart from this assumption of them, because of the surprising surgery of the period. Historical traditions from the earlier as well as the later medieval times demonstrate a magnificent development of hospital organization. ”

“ History of the Hospital Movement.—We have now to consider the principles upon which the provision of the best form of medical care in hospitals can be secured for all classes of people. Though hospitals cannot be claimed as a direct result of Christianity, no doubt it softened the relations between men, and gradually tended to instil humanitarian views and to make them popular with the civilized peoples of the world. ”

“ Moreover, if the benefactors who founded and endowed this hospital resembled the men and women who made possible the powerful monasteries of the Middle Ages, there is also a resemblance to be found between the service that the monks rendered in their day to humanity and knowledge and that devotion which to-day inspires the staff of a great modern hospital. In this very building [xi] are housed and in constant attendance a large number of doctors, surgeons and orderlies. Their quarters, though in many ways like those in a modern club, are almost equally like the cells of a great monastery. ”

“ The glorious halls and corridors, the massive marble pillars, the splendid marble staircases, indicate wealth, but the perfection of the sanitary and scientific arrangements tells of long years of anxious thought and study and research. So perfectly is this marvellous hospital built that, in the event of plague or cholera breaking out to such an extent as to infect the building, the whole of the inside of the hospital can be removed and another hospital will still be left standing as complete as the other. ”

“ During its two years of work for the sick and wounded, no military hospital has succeeded in establishing a finer record. To see it is a wonderful experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 578 beds, and is entirely staffed by women—surgeons, doctors, pathologists, oculists, dental surgeons, anæsthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies. The only men are the patients.
Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director-General of the Army Medical Service, said, when speaking of it: “The hospital is in every respect a military hospital, differing in no way from any other military hospital in the country. ”

“ These are the lives which touch and melt and win him. This, he says, is practical religion. Next, in a state like California, orphanages became an early and a primary want. The Sisters of Charity first supplied them. Then hospitals were needed; and the Sisters of Mercy from Ireland said, "Here are hospitals." They possess the best hospital in the state. They watch the sick with a mother's care; and many a man learns on his bed of pain from their lips lessons which he has never heard in childhood, or has forgotten in manhood. ”

“ The hospital must be visited every day during the latter half of the course. It is a large edifice, situated [150] at the west end of the town, close to the sea, but by no means, we should imagine, in a favourable position for health, as a channel of fetid mud passes close under the walls. The building can accommodate about three hundred patients and is tolerably but not scrupulously clean. It contains two wards, one for surgical, the other for medical cases, a chapel, an apartment for sick prisoners and a variety of different lecture-rooms. ”

“ Our modern city hospital, however, is a Christian institution. Besides, deformed and ailing children were cared for and homes for foundlings were established. Before Christianity the power even of life and death of the parents over their children was recognized, and deformed or ailing children, or those that for some reason were not wanted, were exposed until they died. Christianity put an end to this, and in two classes of institutions, the hospitals and the asylums, abundant opportunity for observation of illness was afforded. ”

“ In accordance with this pre-determined plan, by personal persuasion, by the display of an interest in hospital work, and by official Papal encouragement he succeeded in having, during his own pontificate, a number of hospitals established in all parts of the then civilized world on the model of this hospital of the Holy Ghost at Rome. The initiative thus given proved lasting, and even after the Pontiff's death hospitals of the Holy Ghost continued to multiply in various parts of Europe, until scarcely a city of any importance was without one. ”

“ These principles, as civilization grew, education improved, and the tastes and requirements of the common people were developed, made men and women of many races realize that the treatment of disease in buildings set apart exclusively for the care of the sick was, in fact, a necessity in urban districts. The establishment of a hospital freed the streets of the abuses attendant upon beggars and other poor creatures, who made their ailments the chief ground of appeal for alms. ”

“ The question as to whether secular or religious management of hospitals shall prevail has not been as yet absolutely decided, and this adds to the value of Virchow's opinion. No one knew better than he of the many sacrifices required if the patients are to be properly cared for. Himself, as I have said, utterly without religion, it is curious to see how he recognizes the benefit that religious motives confer upon the management of a hospital, and how much better the work is likely to be done by those who give themselves up to the care of the sick as a Christian duty. ”

“ But the war came, and with it the gathering of forces and its accompanying evils and sickness. There were but very inadequate accommodations in the camp for the sick; none in fact, for the time. The City Hospital seemed a special providence, sent in the very nick of time. It was exactly what was most needed. The frail, damp structures of the camp could protect the sick but little better than tents; and the dry, clean airy bed chambers that cure far better than medicine, were out of the question. The City Hospital could supply all, and of the best construction. ”

“ Nay, even at the least, the alleviation of suffering to those on whom death had already laid his hand has been no small thing; and when we know that of 240,000 out-patients who have received advice and medicines, and 10,400 in-patients whose cases have warranted their admission to the wards, a large number of actual cures have been effected since the establishment of this hospital, we are entitled to regard the institution as one of the most useful that we have ever visited together. ”

“ It might also be right to have reserve wards for what must occur every now and then in a Military Hospital, an influx of patients beyond the usual number, or an outbreak of cholera, or some malignant epidemic, which it might be desirable to isolate from the other patients. ”

“ As they passed down the double row of cots in the improvised hospital—that mercy station where men receive first aid before, if their wounds are sufficiently serious, being sent back to the base hospital, where better facilities and attention are possible, they saw many men whom they knew personally, others whom they recognized by sight. ”

“ Then, after they have been well educated in the faith, they are made Christians. Thus on both accounts this hospital is one of the most illustrious in the world; for if others are illustrious on account of their splendid buildings, their great incomes, the excellent diet they provide, and the neatness with which the sick are cared for, this one, though it has of all these things even more than enough, exceeds all the rest in the fact that practically all those who enter it are heathen, and practically all are baptized. ”

“ It is true that some workers have produced similar results by importing the atmosphere of Christian hospital work into the medical visit or the dispensary; but the point to be noted is that what is natural in the Christian hospital has in other forms of medical work to be deliberately and persistently fostered. ”

“ It is a curious reflection that whilst in the present war the base hospital has been given, if anything, an undue importance, in the other war it has been practically neglected. Our great hospitals are almost entirely field hospitals, planted right in the middle of the battle, and there we keep our patients till such time as they are to all intents and purposes cured. A very few convalescent homes will admit cases which still require treatment, but only a very few. ”

“ The Red Cross had three hospitals of its own in Paris. The first of these was at Neuilly, the hospital which had been the American Ambulance Hospital from the beginning of the war, given over on the third anniversary of its inauguration. Here French and American soldiers, American civilians who worked with the army, and Red Cross officers and men were cared for. ”

“ Since the revolution, the improvements introduced into the interior government of the Hôtel-Dieu have been great and rapid. Each patient now has a bed to himself. Those attacked by contagious disorders are transferred to the Hospice St. Louis. Insane persons are no longer admitted; men, thus afflicted, are sent to a special hospital established at Charenton; and women, to the Salpétrière. Nor are any females longer received into the Hôtel-Dieu to lie-in; an hospital having been established for the reception of pregnant women. ”

“ The reason why she does not go mad or become an imbecile is that she is Swiss. That, at least, is how it strikes the celebrated surgeon, Professor Pieri, who is at the convent very often because he has many of his patients brought there to be operated on and nursed.
The truth is that the hospital is a thoroughly modern one, which has been built as an extension of buildings that date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ”

“ The buildings constituting the Hospital are two fine large airy edifices constructed of white marble, with galleries and piazzas, and surrounded by well-kept grounds which abound with choice fruit trees, and every requisite for the health and comfort of the invalids. The patients remain there only while under treatment for disease. ”

“ We pray for the continued blessing of this institution and hospital, and on all those who are striving to bring out of darkness those unhappy souls, into the pure light of understanding.
Bless the Governors, physicians, and nurses, direct their judgments, prosper their undertakings, and dispose their ministry that the world may feel the blessing and comfort of life in the prevention of disease and the preservation of health. And may we all be gathered in this nation to a more perfect unity of life and purpose in the desire to spend and be spent in the service of our fellow men. ”