Chapter III (2)

"_Suum cuique tribuito,_" "Give to each his own." Two chief orders of power exist in society--interest and sentiment. The natural sphere of interest is confined to material property or goods of the senses; that of sentiment embraces the relations of _persons_, that is, of beings considered as hearts and souls; so that sentiment culminates in devotion, and ranges love and consanguinity, friendship and honor, in the ministries of religion, expanding the selfhood of the individual by the consciousness of his solidarity with the race, and through Christ with our Father in heaven.

Still, practically, the functions of each power are distinct. It is admitted, in regard to the divers organizations of fire companies, for instance, that the payment of fixed salaries is an efficient or adequate motive for the protection of houses. This service was once confided to public spirit; there was no lack of heroic devotion in its exercise; but salaried firemen were found to be more amenable to discipline, and their organizations to be more permanent and reliable. {44} Now, the contrary is true of hospital service and kindred functions, which employ in some places the religious orders of charity, in others hired assistants. Physicians, patients, and inspectors, all proclaim the superiority of the former. Visit our great secular establishments, such as Bellevue or the Charity Hospital, where the service is either hired or compulsory by convicts, and then the hospitals of religious orders, even the poorest, such as that of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, which is supported by begging from door to door, not to mention the more richly endowed hospitals of St. Vincent de Paul or St. Luke, all free to every needy patient: scent the air of the wards, share the food of the refectory, feel the human magnetism of these spheres, take time and mood to appreciate all their conditions, and you will find their difference amount to a contrast in many essentials of hygiene, physical as well as moral, although science is impartially represented at the secular as at the religious establishments. The former have been largely endowed by private and public benefaction; energy, ability, and good will are not wanting among their officers; yet they inspire such aversion that the decent poor will often rather perish than resort to them.

The characteristic superiority of religious charities is historical, and remounts to the earliest epochs of Christendom; although the secular interest of states in the health and contentment of their peoples has been the same in all times and all countries. If their conduct has been different, the reasons of this difference may be found in the nature of their religions and the fervor or torpor of their piety.

Conversely, just in proportion as our modern states alienate their "public charities" from the influence of religion, they become perverted by the same cruelty and heartlessness that characterized the behavior of the pagan world toward its unfortunate classes. Between the philanthropy of the English workhouse and that of Rome which sent poor slaves to perish on the "_dismal island_" in the Tiber, the shorter course seems preferable to us, because less degrading to the soul of the victim, and because it has the courage, at least, of its crime.

The Emperor Maximianus, who shipped a cargo of beggars out to sea and drowned them, was still more complete in this economy of suffering. Disease and misery, decrepitude and helpless infancy, have each in turn become the object of such elimination, which ignores tenderness toward the individual; but the process has never stopped where it might have been justified, in a manner, by the substitution of healthier and stronger or more perfect, for less perfect individuals among the representative types of the species. No; the same spirit that sacrificed the feeblest, revelled in the destruction of the strongest men in its gladiatorial arenas. Even in the restricted sense of patriotism, which had contributed so many devotions on the altar of the country, in the heroic days of Greece and Rome, solidarity had ceased to be matter of practical conscience in the pagan world of the great empire. The Hebrews had developed it only as a tribal and family principle. Where has it ever been a social life-truth, unless in the fold of Christ's disciples? and where has this been practically organized, except by its religious orders?

{45}

The inconsistencies of war excepted, we see life and personal liberty becoming more sacred from age to age, even amid the corruptions of advanced civilization in Christendom; whereas, on the contrary, in pagan civilizations "the springs of humane feeling in every ancient nation, like the waters of the fountain of the sun, were warm at dawn of morning, but chilled gradually as the day advanced, till at noon they became excessively cold."

When the development of intelligence in civilized communities renders them conscious of needs and of resources outlying the circles of family providence; one of their first Christian movements is to care for their disabled members, stricken by disease or wounds from the army of the working poor.

In our monster cities, the hospital acquires gigantic proportions, and political economy meets humanity in the research for a system which shall afford the greatest mitigation of inevitable suffering and the best chances of restoring the sufferers to social uses.

In this research, charity has anticipated experimental science, and to the religious orders belongs the honor of fulfilling the highest ideal of this sacred function.

The organization of hospitals contains for modern civilization and for cosmopolite New York problems of the highest practical import, which especially interest the Christian church.

What has been hitherto effected under the social pressure of extreme necessity, whether to avert the generation and diffusion of pestilence, or the shame of allowing millions of the poor to perish in their squalid misery, is still painfully inadequate to meet the needs of humanity at points where Europe disgorges her miseries upon America. New institutions are annually struggling into existence to supply this demand. Among the most important by their social and religious nature are those of the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis, which may serve as a type of what we would urge concerning the superiority of piety and charity--those daughters of the Christian church--over secular calculations, in this work.

Few, small, and poor as are the hospitals of this order in America, they shine by the spirit which animates them, by the naked purity of their Christian faith, and its works, that confront the world now, precisely as they did eighteen hundred years ago. [Footnote 9]

[Footnote 9: This order of the "Sisters of the Poor of Saint
Francis" has been introduced already into several of our
larger cities, and with much promise of success. Houses of
their order exist in Cincinnati, in Brooklyn, in Hoboken, and
elsewhere, and, more recently, have been established here in
New York.

If they shall have the wisdom--the church's wisdom of old and
of all time, and the spirit which has always animated and
characterized her workings--to adapt themselves to the
country, to its needs and requirements, to its speech, and
(so far as compatible with piety) to its habits and customs,
they will doubtless receive vocations, will grow in numbers,
will be able to accomplish much in alleviating the sufferings
of humanity, and will do no small share of the great work of
bringing the Catholic Church rightfully before the American
people.

We subjoin the following deserved tribute to their house here
in New York, which we find in the _Evening Post_, of
August 13th.:

"Saint Francis Hospital.

"To the Editors of the _Evening Post_:

"I venture to affirm that at least nine tenths of the good
people of this great city are entirely ignorant of the
existence of the Hospital of Saint Francis in our midst.
Indeed, with my long and generally intimate knowledge of the
various benevolences of the city, I was not at all aware of
this institution, until a kind lady who has been a warm
friend of the House of Industry acquainted me with the fact a
few days since, and in her company I had the pleasure of
visiting the hospital. For several reasons I beg your
permission to say a few words about it in the _Evening
Post_.

"It is located on Fifth and Sixth streets, between Avenues B
and C, being the two brick dwellings Nos. 407 and 409 Fifth
street, and the one immediately in the rear of No. 173 Sixth
street. It is under the care of the 'Sisters of the Poor of
Saint Francis,' and is a free hospital for both sexes,
without distinction as to creed, and its inmates comprise
Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. The means for purchasing
this property were obtained by the solicitations of the
sisters from door to door. I think the order of Saint Francis
originated in Germany, where it still has its headquarters.
Most of the sisters here are German, though there are
certainly one or two exceptions. The accommodations are
altogether inadequate, and not at all well adapted to the
purposes. The patients are cheerful and happy, and there is
every evidence that all the efforts of these sisters arise
from the most pure and unselfish motives, and that there is
not the least constraint in regard to religious matters
resting upon the inmates. There is a very small chapel in the
establishment, the attendance upon which is wholly voluntary.
The commonest services are performed by the sisters, and,
Puritan Protestant as I was educated, I could but admire the
devotion and kindness of these women. I believe their charity
is a true and unselfish one; that they are animated by his
Spirit who went about doing good, and they should be well
supported in their work.

"The patients are of all ages and nationalities, perhaps a
more than usual average of Germans. I was particularly
interested in two of the wards, one for the 'grandfathers'
and the other for the 'grandmothers,' both of them filled
with quite aged people. Many of the patients seemed to be
incurables, and have a permanent home in the Saint Francis.
The good sisters have secured a large plot of ground on which
they purpose erecting a building of much greater capacity
than those they now occupy, and thoroughly adapted to the
objects of the institution. For this object they will need
large contributions, which I earnestly hope will be promptly
furnished. The following is a general summary of the past
year:

Number of patients treated in Hospital,
(males, 484; females, 108).............593

Discharged, cured or improved............423

Died......................................88

Remaining December 31, 1867...............81

"I have written out this simple statement, because it is
always pleasant for me to commend all right agencies working
for the comfort of the sick poor, and because, comparatively
isolated as these women are, they have special claim to
sympathy and assistance; and also, because they are
Catholics, I am glad of an opportunity to show that
Protestants can appreciate what is good, no matter who
originates it.

"S. B. Halliday."]

{46}

Arrogant, imposing, and splendid in Broadway, the lusts of power and greed which the poor world now serves show the reverse of the picture in the indigent swarms which vegetate a little way east from First avenue. Passing from the hot-beds of luxury and their exhaustive reactions of improvident misery, enter the Hospital of the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis, on Fifth street, near Avenue B. Its extreme neatness in the midst of squalor, its sweetness amid corruptions, atmospheric and social, its severe simplicity of self-renunciation, shaming the complex artifices of our cupidity, its devotion so consistent, so persistent, as the stream of charity ascends toward its fountain-level in the heights of faith; all smite upon the heart with the manifest presence of Jesus. Its inmates attest with a grateful enthusiasm the kindness there lavished upon them. The voices of prayer and praise consecrate the wholesome food to bodily uses; the sweetness of fellowship in Christ pervades all its relations and dignifies the humblest offices. Here are no hired nurses; life-devotion supplies all. The iniquities of civilization or the discrepancies between the soul's ideal and the world's possible, may defeat nature's fondest intentions of personal destiny in love and maternity for individual lives; but as "the stone which the builders rejected, the same shall become the head of the corner," so the career of charity opens to all who live in Christ a higher sphere of espousals and of motherhood, pure from the dross of selfishness.

One who observes the practical working of this institution must soon be convinced that it possesses neither time nor inclination for other arts of proselyting, than the attractive emanations of a glowing, earnest life of love and duty. Fourteen sisters support and care for more than a hundred patients, and even add to the domestic and ward service that of the pharmacy. The patients receive daily visits from a physician and a clergyman. "We know," say the sisters, "that, when the body is sick, the soul suffers, and that spiritual consolation often does the body more good than the best medicines." Books are provided for those able and willing to read. Attendance at the chapel is optional. There are regular services on Sunday. The patients are of diverse creeds, as of diverse nations. This hospital is often preferred by Protestants, and even by Jews; for those who suffer go where they find hearts to sympathize with and hands to help them. {47} They see that the poor sisters have nothing for their labors but their simple food and clothing. More is not allowed by the rules of their order, that they may the more disinterestedly apply themselves to the care of the poor and suffering sick, the support of whom and other expenses of the institution depend upon the daily collections and labors of the sisters themselves." (_Report_ for 1867.) This noble ignorance of all distinctions of creed and sect is the common attribute of the Sisters of Charity. Those who serve the Hospital of St. Vincent de Paul, an older and wealthier charity than that of the Sisters of St. Francis, one of the most creditable, indeed, in our country, open its doors alike to sufferers of all denominations.

In regard to the matter of practical economy and saving to the state, from placing its hospitals, and other like institutions, under the care of the religious orders, we are permitted to give the following extract from a letter from a Catholic lady of Cincinnati:

"The only public institution we as yet have which is supported
from the public purse is the prison, managed by the Good
Shepherds. In his annual report, the mayor always praises their
economy and excellent management, but he has never had the
magnanimity to publish the thousands annually saved, in
comparison with the old _régime_. Their salaries are fixed
at $100 a year for six sisters--$600, which is $100 less than
the pay of a single policeman. The sisters have the entire
management of the prison. The Harris School is in full
operation. The house can receive no more than about fifty-five.
Colonel Harris, the founder, a Protestant, always expresses his
surprise at _the little outlay_. Our own experience shows
an immense economy, as well as superior moral influence in the
effects of our charities, so beneficial in softening the hearts
of the poor."

We may here take occasion to remark that a religious order affords guarantees of honest administration in a higher degree than any individual can do by his personal responsibility. The legal security, or values pledged, may be equal; but in one case there is at stake only a business responsibility, in which it is often regarded as smart to outwit a committee of inspection; while, on the other hand, corporate honor is involved, and the officer entrusted with funds is doubly responsible to the committee of inspection, and to the order of which he or she is a member, under the more extended affiliation of the church.

Moreover, the discipline of the religious orders is very rigorous on the chapter of economies, and there are not by any means the same opportunities or temptations for an officer to divert funds from public to private uses. The inspectors themselves will often be Protestants.

It behoves us to examine the use of hospitals in the general system of humanitary functions. The hospital is a corollary of the city. The city is a gland or glandular system of elaboration for the social and intellectual secretions of humanity--arts, sciences, and refinements. But the advantages of the city are obtained only by great sacrifices; among which is the separation of great numbers of persons from their local and family attachments, obliging them to derive their subsistence from industries more precarious than those of rural life. More wisdom being required to direct one's course in the complex relations of the city, more are bewildered, misled, overwhelmed; vast and powerful currents of crime and of waste are generated, and restorative measures are needed to counteract them. {48} Now, the necessity of cities and that of hospitals being admitted, how, let us ask, can this kind of help be rendered, this sort of duty performed, so as most worthily to attest the principle of human solidarity, so as to benefit most the recipients of charity, to honor most the organs by which charity is rendered, and so secure the best kind of service in this arduous function; finally, how best to economize the resources of collective society in the adaptation of means to ends?

First, let us consider the expediences of public charity, especially in reference to the persons or characters of its organs.

The best interest of society demands that there shall be a place for every one, and every one in his place; or, in other words, that as specific vocations are inherent to each type of character, so _that_ use should be allotted to each for which nature supplies the aptitudes, and which it embraces with ardor.

The attractiveness of certain functions< or the aversion occasioned by them, has very little to do with the impression they make on the senses of a party indifferent. The cares required by an infant, for example, which excite maternal zeal in all its plenitude, appear simply tedious and disgusting to most men. So it is with the care of the sick, in which science and affection find powerful attachments insensible to others, who, good in other ways, feel no vocation for it. Finally, and beyond all special vocations, there is the enthusiasm of devotion, the religious instinct to which Christianity appeals, which it awakens in many souls, and which it justifies in affording to it the highest spheres of use. The contemplative idealist may try to escape the normal limitations of his nature in vague aspiration; but Jesus has provided against this Brahminic perversion by the culture of charity, in identifying the love of God with the love of the neighbor, and himself with the least of mankind. "As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." (St. Matthew xxv. 40.)

We do not suppose that Christianity endowed human nature with philanthropy as a new passion; it gave this aspect, this evolution, this modality, to what had been patriotism for the heroic states of Rome, of Greece, and other nations, which had always sought, and sometimes found, a social channel, but which Christianity more fully satisfied in the theory and practice of unity.

There have always been developed, in proportion with the industrial progress of civilization, wants extraordinary without being fantastic. Such are the cares of illness. The wisdom of Christian charity has adapted to these extreme wants vocations equally extreme, in the devotion of religious orders; and this duty has devolved especially upon the female sex, because it is better gifted than the male for the ministry of compassion.

It is feasible, moreover, for religious orders to accept as well the penitent as the virgin; and shaming the world's intolerance, to rescue from sin and disgrace a lower world of souls, whom passion or imprudence had otherwise ruined.

There is no depth of crime, indeed, from which its subjects may not be rescued by charitable labors; and in proportion as their organization is extended and perfected, legal as well as simply moral offences may find here at once their prevention and their expiation. The brothel and the penitentiary, those two institutions of hell on earth, may thus be countermined, and the means of redemption afforded to their victims. {49} The salutary influence which the discipline of charitable works exerts over mental and moral aberrations, may even reclaim not a few of the insane, or those who, under ordinary circumstances, are drifting fatally toward the lunatic asylum.

That extraordinary virtue which the impulse and exercise of active benevolence has in developing the soul and awakening its latent powers from torpor, may appear from the following incident lately observed at Mr. Bost's, in Laforce, Dordogne:

One day a poor girl, deaf, dumb, blind, paralytic, and epileptic, was brought to Bethesda. "It required some courage," says the narrator, Mr. De Liefde, "to fix one's eyes on that miserable creature, with her dried-up, contracted limbs, her repulsive face, the features of which were constantly contorted in the most hideous manner. Well, an idiot took charge of that child, guarded and nursed it, and stood by its death-bed to administer to it the last solace of love! And such was the indefatigable care and even intelligent thoughtfulness with which she tended her poor helpless charge that Mr. Bost said, 'When I lie on my death-bed, I shall count it a blessing to be nursed in this way.' I do not wonder at such hearts being able to understand what is the meaning of the simple sentence, 'God loveth you,' long before the intellect is able to catch the difference between two and three; nor can I be surprised at what Mrs. Castel told me, that the same children who do not know whether a shoe ought to be on the foot or on the head, or who, if not prevented, would, like beasts, walk on all fours and lick the dirt, may yet sometimes be heard ejaculating, '_Mon Dieu! prends pitié de moi. J'en at bien besoin_.'

"Long before they could catch the idea of shifting a piece of wood from the right hand to the left, they gave evidence of being pleased by an act of kindness, and of being grateful for a benefit bestowed on them.

"In the year 1854, a girl who was a perfect idiot stood, one day, in Mr. Bost's lobby. The aspect of the hideous-looking little creature was so sickening that Mr. Bost could not permit her to be taken into the establishment, but still less could he send her away. If ever there was a subject for compassionate, saving love, it was here. The power of prayer and the perseverance of charity could now be put to the test. Mr. Bost resolved to keep the girl in his own house. The doctors declared it perfect folly. During three months, all his efforts to strike a spark of intellect out of this flint proved a total failure. But one evening, at worship, while the hymn was being sung, he heard an articulate and harmonious tone proceed from the brutishly shaped mouth. The child evidently tried to put its voice in accord with the sounds which it was hearing. Mr. Bost is a musician, and at once applied his talent to the benefit of his unhappy pupil. Under the softening and cheering influence of harmony, it was affecting to see how, first with painful struggles, and then, with growing ease, the mind of the child emerged from the dark deep in which it had been confined. By little and little, the idiot succeeded in uttering articulate sounds, then in uniting them into syllables, and finally into words. At the same time, her health improved visibly, her nervous system became less irritable, her face assumed more and more a rational expression. She began to show joy and surprise when receiving something that was agreeable to her. Then tokens of gratitude and of affection followed. {50} In short, after a lapse of two years, the idiot had disappeared to make room for a child which appeared to be behind but a few years only, when compared with other children of her own age. At present, that same child, formerly beneath the level of the brute, speaks well, sews, and knits, and might be the teacher of children less sunken in idiocy than herself when she first set foot on Mr. Bost's threshold."

Such was the spirit and such the conduct which determined mediaeval Europe to entrust the religious orders with vast landed possessions, and with these the whole care of the poor, of the sick, and of the wayfarer, duties which they discharged with greater satisfaction to the people than any secular aristocracy of privilege known in the records of history.

"For the uncertain dispositions of the rich, for their occasional and often capricious charity, was substituted the certain, the steady, the impartial hand of a constantly resident and unmarried administrator of bodily as well as spiritual comfort to the poor, the unfortunate, and the stranger."

Now, still the question presses, whether, instead of confiding our sick to hired nurses, we shall not invite the willing sisterhood to extend their organization among us, and sustain them in this devotion. It is well ascertained that none can make a thousand dollars go so far as they can in the service of their sick.

It is notorious in America, that public works undertaken by the government are generally ill done and very wastefully. Hence, common sense excludes the government from enterprises of internal improvement, and confides them either to individuals or companies, without hesitating thus to create privileged orders and to favor a moneyed aristocracy.

To have a great work well done, passions as well as interests must be engaged in it; personal character, pride, and ambition, as well as skill and capital; and where many persons must co-operate, there is no guarantee of harmony in action and of successful result so sure as that corporate zeal which religion employs with so much power, and which religion alone can bring to bear. This is indeed a holy fire, enkindled and kept alive upon objects of charity, that purges away dross.

If the Catholic Church has in all ages conducted her enterprises with the greatest success, it is because she has known how to enlist the greatest number of motives, the strongest and the best. On the other hand, it will be readily confessed that the great public hospitals under secular control do not even bring into play the common levers of interest which secure results in the management of railroads, of hotels or banking-houses, nor those of ambition, which animate the army and navy. Charity, as a secular business, is always poorly paid, rendered grudgingly, distastefully, and so as to excite aversion. Many will rather die than have recourse to it. It always carries with it a certain stigma of inferiority and contempt. No personal character or corporate zeal is identified with it, still less can there exist that unison of feeling and of effort which places the seal of the divine humanity on such institutions as those of the sisters. We transcribe from one of the most remarkable works of modern travel, _The Pillars of Hercules_, by David Urquhart, his impression of the last remaining hospitals of the religious order in Spain. Let us note that Mr. Urquhart is an Englishman and a Protestant:

{51}

"The Hospicio of Cadiz is at once a poor-house and a house of
industry, a school, a foundling hospital, a hospital, and a
mad-house; that is, it supplies the places of all these
institutions. It is imposing in its form, embellished in its
interior, and as unlike in all its attributes and effects as
anything can be to the edifices consecrated to the remedying of
human misery, by our own charity and wisdom.

"Hospital De La Sangre, (Seville.)

"This is a noble edifice, composed of several grand courts and
of two stories; the lower one for summer, and the upper one for
winter. I think I may say that to each patient is allotted at
least four times as much space as in any similar European
establishment, and the very troughs in which the dirty linen is
washed are marble: the patients have two changes of clean linen
in the week. The kitchens are all resplendent with painted
tiles and cleanliness, and there seemed abundance of excellent
food. In these institutions, in Spain, the inmates are
completely at home. Soft and blooming girls, with downcast look
and hurried step, were attending upon the poor, the maimed, and
the suffering. The lady-directress had told the servant who
accompanied me to bring me, after my visit, to her apartment,
which was a hall in one of the corners of the building; she
said she had heard that England was celebrated for its charity,
and asked if our poor and sick were better off than in Spain. I
was obliged to confess that the reverse was the case. She asked
me if it was not true that we hired mercenaries to attend on
the sick, and abstained from performing that duty ourselves;
and if our charity was not imposed as a tax? She told me that
there were eight hundred of her order in Spain; that it was the
only one that had not been destroyed; that none were admitted
but those of noble birth or of gentle blood; and that they took
all the vows except that of seclusion, and in lieu of it took
that of service to the poor and sick. The Saint Isabelle of
Murillo was the model of their order. The Hospital de la Sangre
was founded by a woman."

Mrs. Jameson [Footnote 10] pays a just tribute to the Hospital Lariboissière, in Paris, "a model of all that a civil hospital ought to be--clean, airy, light, lofty, above all, cheerful. I should observe," she says, "that generally in the hospitals served by Sisters of Charity, there is ever an air of cheerfulness, caused by their own sweetness of temper and voluntary devotion to their work. At the time that I visited this hospital, it contained six hundred and twelve patients, three hundred men and three hundred and twelve women, in two ranges of building divided by a very pretty garden. The whole interior management is entrusted to twenty-five trained sisters of the same order as those who serve the Hôtel Dieu. There are, besides, about forty servants, men and women, men to do the rough work, and male nurses to assist in the men's wards under the supervision of the sisters. This hospital was founded by a lady, a rich heiress, a married woman too. She had the assistance of the best architects in France to plan her building, while medical and scientific men had aided her with their counsels."

[Footnote 10: _Sisters of Charity,
Protestant and Catholic_.]

In the _General Report on the Condition of the Prisons of Piedmont, to the Minister of the Interior_, we find this paragraph:

{52}

"It is an indisputable fact that the prisons which are served
by the sisters are the best ordered, the most cleanly, and in
all respects the best regulated in the country. To which the
minister of the interior adds: Not only have we experienced the
advantage of employing the Sisters of Charity in the prisons,
in the supervision of the details, in distributing food,
preparing medicines, and nursing the sick in the infirmaries,
but we find the influence of these ladies on the minds of the
prisoners when recovering from sickness has been productive of
the greatest benefit, as leading to permanent reform in many
cases, and a better frame of mind always; for this reason,
among others, we have given them every encouragement.

"Among the other reasons alluded to, the greater economy of the
management is a principal one. It is admitted, even by those
who are opposed to them, that, in the administration of
details, these women can always make a given sum go further
than the paid officials of the other sex. Their opposition to
the sale of wine and brandy to the prisoners, except when
prescribed by the physicians, is also worthy of note.

"One of the directors of the great military hospital at Turin
told Mrs. Jameson that he regarded it as one of the best deeds
of his life, that he had recommended and carried through the
employment of the Sisters of Charity in this institution.
Before the introduction of these ladies, the sick soldiers had
been nursed by orderlies sent from the neighboring barracks,
men chosen because they were unfit for other work. The most
rigid discipline was necessary to keep them in order, and the
dirt, neglect, and general immorality were frightful. Any
change was, however, resisted by the military and medical
authorities till the invasion of the cholera; then the
orderlies became, most of them, useless, distracted, and almost
paralyzed with terror. Some devoted Sisters of Charity were
introduced in a moment of perplexity and panic; then all went
well--propriety, cleanliness, and comfort prevailed. No day
passes, said this director, that I do not bless God for the
change which I was the humble instrument of accomplishing in
this place. Very similar was the information received relative
to the naval hospital at Genoa.

"Another excellent hospital, that of St. John, at Turin,
contained four hundred patients, male and female, besides its
ward for sick children, and two for the bedridden and helpless
poor, the whole being under the management of twenty-two
religious women with forty-five assistants, and a large number
of physicians and students. All was clean, neat, and cheerful.
I was particularly struck by the neatness with which the food
was served; men brought it up in large trays, but the ladies
themselves distributed it. There was a little dog with its
forepaws resting on one of the beds and its eyes steadfastly
fixed on the sick man, with a pathetic, wistful expression,
while a girl knelt beside him, to whom one of the sisters was
speaking words of comfort.

"In this and other hospitals is an excellent arrangement for
the night-watch. It was a large sentry-box of octagon shape,
looking each way, the upper part all of glass, but furnished
with curtains, and on a table were writing materials,
medicines, and restoratives, linen napkins, etc. Two sisters
watched here all night; here the accounts were kept, and
privacy secured, when necessary, for the ladies on duty.

"The Marchese A----, one of the governors of the Hospice de la
Maternité, described to us in terms of horror the state in
which he had found the establishment when under the management
of a board of governors, who employed hired matrons and nurses.
{53}
At last, in despair, he sent for some trained sisters, ten of
whom, with a superior, now directed the whole in that spirit of
order, cheerfulness, and unremitting attention which belongs to
them.

"We cannot," he said, "give them unlimited means, for these
good ladies think that all should go to the poor; but if we
allow them a fixed sum, we find they can do more with it than
we could have believed possible, and they never go beyond it;
they are admirable accountants and economists.

"In the great civil hospital at Vienna, larger even than the
Hotel Dieu of Paris, the Sisters of Charity were being
introduced some twelve years ago when Mrs. J. visited it.

"The disorderly habits and the want of intelligence in the paid
female nurses had induced the managers to invite the
co-operation of the religious sisters, though it was at first
against their will. In the Hospital of Saint John, at Salzburg,
the same change had been found necessary.

"At Vienna, I saw a small hospital belonging to the Sisters of
Charity there. Two of the sisters had settled in a small old
house. Several of the adjoining buildings were added one after
the other, connected by wooden corridors. In the infirmary I
found twenty-six men and twenty-six women, besides nine beds
for cholera. There were fifty sisters, of whom one half were
employed in the house, and the other half were going their
rounds among the poor, or nursing the sick at private houses.
There was a nursery for infants whose mothers were at work; a
day-school for one hundred and fifty girls, in which only
knitting and sewing were taught, all clean, orderly, and, above
all, cheerful. There was a dispensary, where two of the sisters
were employed in making up prescriptions, homoeopathic and
allopathic. There was a large, airy kitchen, where three of the
sisters, with two assistants, were cooking. There were two
priests and two physicians. So that, in fact, under this roof,
we had the elements, on a small scale, of an English workhouse;
but very different was the spirit which animated it.

"I saw at Vienna another excellent hospital for women alone, of
which the whole administration and support rested with the
ladies of the Order St. Elizabeth. These are _cloistered_.
All sick women who apply for admission are taken in, without
any questions asked, so long as there is room for them. I found
there ninety-two patients, about twenty of whom were ill of
cholera. In each ward were sixteen beds, over which two sisters
presided. The dispensary, which was admirably arranged, was
entirely managed by two of the ladies. The superior told me
that they have always three or more sisters preparing for their
profession under the best apothecaries, and there was a large
garden principally of medicinal and kitchen herbs. Nothing
could exceed the purity of the air, and the cleanliness, order,
and quiet everywhere apparent."

Let us remark certain features in these last two examples:

1. The possibility of recreation by a timely change of labors, as from the hospital to the school, or to the garden, etc.

2. The economy, and guarantee of genuineness, afforded by the culture and pharmaceutic preparation of medicinal herbs.

3. The unison of action, by fulfilment of sanitary functions by members of their own body.

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"It was admitted on all sides in England, when investigations
were held on the office of hospital nursing, that the general
management of our hospitals and charitable institutions exhibited
the want of female aid such as exists in the hospitals abroad--
the want of a moral, religious, intelligent, sympathizing
influence combined with the physical cares of a common nurse.
Some inquiry was made into the general character of hospital
nurses, and the qualifications desired, and what were these
qualifications? Obedience, presence of mind, cheerfulness,
sobriety, forbearance, patience, judgment, kindness of heart, a
light, delicate hand, a gentle voice, a quick eye; these were the
qualities enumerated as not merely desirable, but necessary in a
good and efficient nurse--virtues not easily to be purchased for
£14 10S. per year! (or hired at $14 a month in New York [Footnote
11])--qualifications, indeed, which, in their union, would form
an admirable woman in any class of life, and fit her for any
sphere of duty, from the highest to the lowest. In general,
however, the requirements of our medical men are much more
limited; they consider themselves fortunate if they can ensure
obedience and sobriety, even without education, tenderness,
religious feeling, or any high principle of duty. On the whole,
the testimony brought before us is sickening. Drunkenness,
profligacy, violence of temper, horribly coarse and brutal
language--these are common, albeit the reverse of the picture is
generally true. The toil is great, the duties disgusting, the
pecuniary remuneration small, so that there is nothing to invite
the co-operation of a better class of nurses but the highest
motives which can influence a true Christian. At one moment the
selfishness and irritability of the sufferers require a strong
control; at another time their dejection and weakness require the
utmost tenderness, sympathy, and judgment. To rebuke the
self-righteous, to bind up the broken-hearted, to strengthen, to
comfort the feeble, to drop the words of peace into the disturbed
or softened mind just at the right moment; there are few nurses
who could be entrusted with such a charge, or be brought to
regard it as a part of their duty. To this social function
corresponds the Sister of Charity, as defined by St. Vincent de
Paul, an ideal so often fulfilled in life and action.

[Footnote 11: This is the salary of orderlies at Bellevue
Hospital, where the duties are often so arduous that one
attendant would be quite inadequate to the care of twenty
beds but for the aid rendered by patients to each other. The
night-watch passes but once in two hours.]

"Can any one doubt that the element of power, disunited from
that of Christian love, must, in the long run, become a hard,
cold, cruel machine, and that this must of necessity be the
result where the masculine energy acts independently of the
feminine sympathies?

"All to whom I have spoken, without one exception, bear witness
to the salutary influence exercised by the lady nurses in the
Crimea over the men. In the most violent attacks of fever and
delirium, when the orderlies could not hold them down in their
beds, the mere presence of one of these ladies, instead of
exciting, had the effect of instantly calming the spirits and
subduing the most refractory. It is allowed, also, that these
ladies had the power to repress swearing and coarse language,
to prevent the smuggling of brandy and raka into the wards, to
open the hearts of the sullen and desperate to contrition and
responsive kindness. 'Even when in an apparently dying state,'
writes one of these illustrious nurses, 'they would look up in
our faces and smile.'"

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Dr. H. R. Storer, of Boston, has recently put forth a little book entitled _Nurses and Nursing_, etc., abounding in suggestions which may some day be utilized in a hospital more liberally endowed and more elaborately organized than anything which now exists, and in which he mentions, with the highest regard, the Hospital of the Sisters of St. Francis, in Boston, 28 Sansom street. The doctor does well to dedicate his humane aspirations for a perfect system of nursing to the sisterhood. From what zeal less earnest, less intelligent, less refined, or less holy, can we ever expect to find music and flowers, birds, landscape views, the varied resources of luxury in nature and society, made tributary to the service of the sick?

A worthy servant of our Master, Mr. Bost, of Dordogne, the founder and administrator of several important charitable institutions, having among them departments for the hygienic treatment of epilepsy, scrofula, consumption, and idiocy, one of whose cures we have cited, remarks:

"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.

----------

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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.]

I call up matters still fresh in recollection, in proceeding to speak here of a work of art which so justly drew to itself the public attention at the Universal Exposition of 1867. I refer to the grand cartoon of Kaulbach, which, under the title of the _Era of the Reformation_, figured in the Bavarian department.

The purely artistic critic has already fulfilled his mission in regard to that remarkable composition, and it is not from the artistic point of view that I permit myself to reopen its study. I had already, years ago, admired that magnificent fresco, one of the most beautiful ornaments of the Berlin Museum; and after having a long while contemplated and meditated upon it, it seemed to me that one could not too highly praise the vigor of composition and the marvellous skill with which the artist had been able to group, within so narrow a space, so many different personages, and to render living to the eyes of the spectator one of the most stormy periods of modern times. But in this beautiful drawing there is something else than a work of art: there is a thesis. And that thesis is this: That the sixteenth century belongs wholly to the Protestant Reformation; that that Reformation is its centre, its heart, its vital principle; that everything of that period--theology, letters, science, art, the discoveries of human genius, political and military power--all came of the Reformation. Hence the name given to the tableau--the _Era of the Reformation_. Hence, also, the selection, the treatment, and the grouping of all the personages in it.

And since I cannot avail myself of the help of an engraving or photograph, I am going to attempt a rapid sketch, as a whole and in its principal details, of this vast composition.

In the centre, and as the culminating point toward which the whole movement of the picture converges, is figured Dr. Martin Luther. The former Augustinian monk holds himself erect, upon the uppermost step of that temple within whose walls a whole century is represented as in motion, and he raises aloft above his head, with both hands, the Bible--the Bible, that world at once both old and new, which, according to the Protestant hypothesis, the genius of Luther discovered, buried under the darkness of ignorance and Roman superstition, as, in like manner, thirty years before him the bold Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus--whom one sees at the left-hand side of the picture, resting his hand, firm and inspired, upon the map of the world--had found, in the ocean's midst, the vast continents of the American hemisphere.

At the left of Luther stand the theologians and pastors who adhered to his dogmatic teaching: Justus Jonas, and, next to him, Bugenhagen, who is distributing the Lord's Supper to the two princes, John le Sage and John Frederic, the two grand patrons of nascent Lutheranism. {57} At the right of the Saxon monk stands Zwingle, holding also the book of the Scriptures, and Calvin, who is giving the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper to a group of Huguenots, among whom we distinguish Maurice of Saxony and Coligny.

The artist does not tell us, it is true--and I own that his pencil could hardly have told us--whether the Bible which Luther holds speaks the same language as the Bible placed in Zwingle's hands; nor how, within a step or two of the patriarch of the Reformation, Bugenhagen gives a Lord's Supper wherein is really contained, with the bread and wine, the body of Christ, while, alike near to him on the other side, Calvin is giving another Lord's Supper which is only a figure of that same body, and wherein the faithful partake of the communion of Jesus Christ by faith only.

A little beneath Luther, in the attitude of a submissive disciple and admirer, and indicating by a gesture the Wittenberg doctor, as much as to say, "There is the Master!" stands the mild Melanchthon, conversing with two savants of the times--Eberhardt of Tann and Ulrich Sazius. These two men are pressing each other's hands, as if the artist would express thereby the strange accommodations to which, in the matter of the Augsburg confession, the strict Lutherans, on the one side, and those who had a leaning toward the Zwinglian and Calvinistic ideas, on the other, lent themselves. [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: It is well known that Melanchthon--who
personally inclined toward the ideas of Carlostadt and the
sacramentarians respecting the Lord's Supper; who, moreover,
upon the question of the outward hierarchy of the church,
would have willingly lent himself to a compromise with the
Catholics; who, underneath the whole, did not dare to
contradict Luther--thought to reconcile all these
difficulties by putting forth two editions of the Augsburg
Confession--the edition _invariata_, or strictly
Lutheran, and the edition _variata_, wherein concessions
are made to Calvinistic ideas.]

Behind these corypheuses of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the precursors of the grand "liberalizing" movement have not been forgotten.

The Reformation, as is known, holds essentially to having a tradition--a rise and visible continuation, reaching back to the earlier ages. Behold them, then, these prophets and forerunners of the "word of life:" Here, Peter Waldo, Arnold of Brescia, Wickliffe, John Huss; there, Abelard, the bold metaphysician, the merciless dialectician, the same whom St. Bernard accuses of sacrificing faith to reason, and of destroying, by his explications, the essence of the mysteries; [Footnote 14] next, by his side, Savonarola and Tauler, the spiritual sons of the canonized monk of the thirteenth century, (St. Dominic,) to whose memory classic Protestantism never fails to attach the founding of the Inquisition, with all its attendant train of horrors: Tauler, of whom they desire to make one of the precursors of the new exegesis of the Scriptures; and Savonarola, whose animated and fiery gesture recalls at once the popular tribune, the Florentine republican chief, and the head-strong opposer of the church's hierarchical authority.

[Footnote 14: St. Bernard, letters 188th and 189th.]

Following upon these, come next in order all those other great geniuses of the human race, more numerous and prolific than ever in an age which justly calls itself the age of _renewal_, (_de la Renaissance_,) and when a thousand favoring circumstances had imparted mighty impulse to the human mind; and they all proceed to arrange themselves in a most harmonious manner around that renovation of Christianity and the church, which is, as it were, (in the picture,) the heart and the vital principle of all the movements of the era. Princes, warriors, statesmen, savants, artists, scholars, jurists, poets, critics, inventors--all have their place in this grand composition.

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In the train of the haughty Elizabeth of England, but marching at some distance from that pitiless reformer, as if they desired to leave place for the gory shade of the unfortunate Mary Stuart, "Queen of Scots," appear Thomas Cranmer, More, Burleigh, Essex, Drake, and other gentlemen who represent the English Church. Another group brings together Albert of Brandenburg, William of Orange, Barnevelt, and, at the end, Gustavus Adolphus, evoked a century in advance, it is true, but nevertheless consecrated by his bold deeds of arms and his premature death as a hero--I was about to say as a saint--of the Protestant Church militant.

To warriors and statesmen the painter has given only a secondary place, in a work chiefly designed to glorify intellectual power; and, after the apostles of the Reformation, the honors of this grand piece of canvas are meted out to savants, scholars, and artists.

Bacon of Verulam, with his _Novum Organum_, makes a part of that group so vigorously designed, where are seen, with Christopher Columbus, Harvey, Vesalius, and Paracelsus. High up in the edifice, and properly placed there as in a sort of observatory, Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler are studying the course of the stars, and calculating the laws of their revolutions. So much for science.