Leper hospital

“ From this time onward the religious orders strongly influenced hospital development. In the twelfth century the Beguines and Beghards were hospital orders which flourished especially throughout Belgium, France and Germany, while the Alexians and Antonines established and managed hospitals in various parts of Italy as well. Leprosy following in the wake of the crusades, special communities were formed to care for lepers. Thousands of leper houses arose in all parts of Europe—it is estimated that 2,000 existed in Germany alone. ”

“ List of Leper Hospitals formerly existing in Great Britain.
162
APPENDIX. ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JOSEPH ROBERTSON, LL.D.
Leper Hospital of Glasgow.
Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I. p. 10.—“In 1350, in the reign of David II., the Lady of Lochow, daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany, erected a leper hospital at the Gorbals of Glasgow, near the old bridge.— (Gibson’s Hist. of Glasg. p. 52; Cleland’s Glasg. vol. i. p. 68.) ”
There is some mistake here. If the leper hospital was founded by the Lady of Lochow, daughter of the Duke of Albany, it must have been a hundred years after 1350. ”

“ In it stands a lawres hospital, that is to say, a hospital for lepers (loure, or lower, in British is a leper) , which hath good endowment of lands and revenues appertaining thereto, founded by the piety and charity of the well-disposed people of this county in former ages, for the relief, support, and maintenance of all such people as should be visited with that sickness called elphantiasy, in Latin lepra or elphantia, in English leprosy, in British lowerery; being a white infectious scurf running all over the bodies of such persons as are tainted therewith. ”

“ The English Missionaries had been anxious for some time to build a leper hospital, but could not spare the energy for it from their other work. And for a long time the Catholics seemed entirely indifferent to the needs of lepers. But finally, there arrived in the latter mission a very earnest and sympathetic priest, whose attention was early attracted to the collection of miserable hovels outside the city, where the community of suffering had drawn together a larger group of outcast lepers. ”

“ Some parts of this Hospital, including the chapel and its altar in situ, remain.
In 1553 at the Lazar House of SS. Mary and Erkemould, Ilford, Essex, founded by the Abbess of Barking, c. 1190, it is recorded that “instead of 13 pore men beying Lepers, two pryest, and one clerke thereof there is at this day but one pryest and two pore men.”
In Scotland the disease lingered till the middle of last century. A day for public thanksgiving for the supposed total deliverance of that country from the scourge of Leprosy, was enjoined, in 1742. The disease however was not quite extinct there ”

“ Besides such notable cases, we find more evidence in the ordinances of the hospital of St Julian at St Albans, which have been preserved more completely than those of any other leper-house. Forasmuch as the disease of leprosy is of all infirmities held the most in contempt, the unfortunate person who is about to be received into the St Albans house is directed to work himself up into a state of the most factitious melancholy ”

“ But if an honest man and true come there, for the purpose of visiting an infirm brother, let him have access to him, that they may mutually discourse on that which is meet.”350
In considering under a previous head the extent of endowment of the British leper hospitals, we have seen that the inmates of many of the poorer institutions depended more or less entirely for 150their means of subsistence upon the casual alms which they were able to beg from the charitable. In a few favoured cases the lepers were specially authorised to pursue this occupation beyond the district of the hospital. ”

“ In the sequel, when considering the causes of the disease, and the regulations of medical police, adopted in regard to the infected, I shall have occasion to speak at length of the strict rules to which the inmates of most of the leper-hospitals were subjected—not for the sake of medical treatment, but with the purpose only of preventing the dissemination of the malady.
Besides being places for the isolation of the infected, the leper-hospitals of Scotland and England were often, like the corresponding institutions of the continent of Europe, founded and endowed as religious establishments ”

“ It was of ancient date, and provided for fourteen female patients, who came somehow to be called the leprosae puellae [170] , although youth is by no means specially associated with leprosy. This [Pg 89] house grew rich, and supported eight brethren for the religious services of the sixteen patients [171] .
It is usual to enumerate five, and sometimes six, other leper-hospitals, in the outskirts of London—at Kingsland or Hackney, in Kent Street, Southwark (the Lock) , at Highgate, at Mile End, at Knightsbridge and at Hammersmith. ”

“ The foundation of the Hospital of St. Leonard at Leicester is assigned by Henry of Knighton to William, the youngest son of Robert Blanchmains, Earl of Leicester, who was a Leper. Nichols felt some doubt about this, thinking that perhaps William the Leper founded only the Spital in the East Suburb, near St. John's chapel, and not the larger hospital beyond the North Bridge. But Henry of Knighton would be sure to know who was the traditional founder of the hospital which lay next door to his own Abbey. The church was, no doubt, built at the same time, for the chapel of St. ”

“ In 1584 the city Magistrates issued orders for finding a commodious place for a leper-house.26 In 1589, they passed an Act for building such an institution at Greenside, and apparently with money granted to them for that purpose, by John Robertson, a merchant in Edinburgh, and others, in pursuance of some previous vow.27 On the 23d November 1591, five leper inhabitants of the city were consigned to this hospital.28 Two of the wives of the lepers voluntarily shut themselves up in the hospital along with their diseased husbands. ”

“ According to tradition, the hospital was founded for lepers by King Robert Bruce, who was himself afflicted with a disease believed to be leprosy. This was done as a thank-offering, for benefit received from the water of a neighbouring well. The spring was doubtless sacred to some saint, probably to Ninian, to whom the hospital was dedicated, and we can safely infer that the patron got the credit of the cure. To maintain the lepers the king gifted various lands to the hospital, among others, those of Robertlone, in Dundonald parish, and of Sheles and Spital-Sheles, in Kyle Stewart. ”

“ If we close the ward to visitors ... we have never in all the years the hospital has been in existence done ... that! Public confidence is our greatest asset. Has been. What shall we do? The newspapers, the police, the reputation of the hospital, d’y’see?”
“Too well, sir.”
But the tension was wearing itself out in speech and Dr. MacArthur went on:
“The hysteria among the nursing and medical staffs was bad enough, God knows, but before today is over, we must face the hysteria manifesting itself among the menial staff. How can a hospital run without orderlies, electricians, cooks? ”

“ In overcoming this prejudice, a great deal depends upon the character of the institution itself. It is not enough to establish hospitals:—they must be attractive and comfortable to such a degree that they become highly desirable to prospective patients. They must be well run, well managed, the food must be good, and the patients well treated. To obtain segregation, we must have hospitals which offer great advantages over the home.
Home Care of the Advanced Case. If there are no hospital facilities, it then becomes the nurse’s duty to give nursing care to the bed-ridden patient. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The existing system of asylum structure, management, and treatment makes this almost unattainable. No class of cases requires the attention of trained nurses more than subjects of recent insanity."
Can the present State hospitals provide such accommodations and give such care as Dr. Tuke claims the acute insane for their proper treatment need? I believe they can, and also that the accommodation and care there provided could be made far better than any that might be furnished in an institution established exclusively on the lines of a general hospital. ”

“ For instance it is stated that in France, in 1225, there were two thousand hospitals for this purpose, while the King Louis the Great founded, in 1260, a special hospital for those made blind by Egyptian ophthalmia. It is well known also that during the middle ages there was the greatest neglect of the ordinary canons of cleanliness both among the upper and lower classes. The number of hospitals and cloisters dedicated to the lepers being insufficient, bath houses were built [Pg 306] and bathkeepers were engaged in order, so far as possible, to prevent the spread of leprosy. ”

“ There seems to be no cure for most of the forms of the leprosy; and when a man is attacked with it, he must go at once to the hospital, no matter whether he is rich or poor. And when he has gone there, he generally remains till death relieves him from his sufferings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The hospital in the days of which I speak was anathema. The poor people hated it. They dreaded it. They looked upon it primarily as a place where people died. It was a matter of difficulty to induce a patient to enter the wards. They feared an operation, and with good cause, for an operation then was a very dubious matter. There were stories afloat of things that happened in the hospital, and it could not be gainsaid that certain of those stories were true.
Treatment was very rough. The surgeon was rough. ”

“ In my experience, too, phthisis has shown the most marked decline in those places where comprehensive measures have been taken for bringing consumptives into hospitals, and the converse has been the case where the converse conditions prevail. It is indeed obvious that in no other way can the danger of infection, which a phthisical patient constitutes, be so effectively removed as by isolation in hospital. Strong support of this method is afforded by leprosy, where good results in attacking the disease have been obtained by following the same principle. ”

“ Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear. ”

“ Blunt, believes that there is now no danger of an epidemic. The city Board of Health held a meeting yesterday and adopted a resolution voicing the same views. Emergency hospitals have been established in every ward for the treatment of the sick and wounded.
“The Ursuline Convent has been converted into a great general hospital for the reception and care of patients who are seriously ill, with a full corps of physicians and trained nurses. All public and private hospitals are filled to their capacity with sufferers. Medical supplies are still much needed. ”

“ Near the town are the remains of a Lepers’ Hospital, which makes one note with thankfulness that, thanks to sanitary science in England, we have no need of such buildings now, and we rejoice that the good old times are gone. ”

“ No one nurse ever has more than seven patients to care for, and because of the arrangements it is easily possible for a nurse to care for seven patients who are not desperately ill. In the ordinary hospital the nurses must make many useless steps. More of their time is spent in walking than in caring for the patient. This hospital is designed to save steps. Each floor is complete in itself, and just as in the factories we have tried to eliminate the necessity for waste motion, so have we also tried to eliminate waste motion in the hospital. ”

“ Most people assume that the older generations did not know how to build good hospitals. They did as well as they could, but until the development of modern knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, as well as the demand made on hospital administration by modern surgery, hospitals could scarcely be expected to be anything but the sordid piles of buildings they usually were, thought proper if they but furnished a protection from the weather and sustenance for the sick poor. ”

“ Always full to overcrowding, never less than 600 patients where we had only the equipment for 200, the whole hospital looked to her for the nursing that is so essential in modern medicine and surgery. For nurses are now an absolute necessity for medical and surgical work of modern times, and we could get no other sisters. The railway was broken, the bridges down, and where could we look for help or hospital comforts or medical necessities? We had pushed on faster than our supplies, and with the equipment of a Casualty Clearing Station we had to do the work of a Stationary Hospital. ”