Part 15

The compassion of the Christ reached and lifted the hopeless heart of suffering humanity as His touch soothed the torturing agony of disease and brought hope and healing into a world hardened to pain.

It released a power the beneficence and helpfulness of which increase year by year as science adds to its ability, and a growing sense of responsibility widens its use.

The Christian era ushered in the day of hope for the sick-poor--a day that has progressed steadily, to an ever-enlarging vision of what was in the heart of Christ for the healing of the nations.

Ancient writers tell us of some efforts in pre-Christian days toward the institutional care of the sick. The earliest records mention the treatment of the sick in the Greek temples of Aesculapius in 1134 B.C.; these were probably not for the poor. Seneca very much later refers to the infirmaries established by the Romans for the well-to-do classes.

In 226 B.C., the Buddhists in India are credited with some small efforts to provide for the sick poor, as are also later the fire worshipers of Persia.

"When the example and teachings of Christ began to bear fruit, and when Jerusalem and the roads approaching it began to be crowded with pilgrims, special accommodations for the use of the sick were established. When monasteries and convents followed, they too, provided for the sick."

From the Roman word "hospitalia" (apartment set apart for guests), our word hospital is derived.

In the writings of St. Jerome, who established several, the word "hospital" is first used for a curative institution.

It is of interest to know that the oldest hospital now in use in Europe, the Hotel Dieu, was founded in Paris, in 600 A. D. by the Bishop of Paris.

All the early hospitals were church institutions, and the wards were clustered about the chapel, as may be seen to-day in the arrangement of beautiful St. Luke's hospital in New York City. Thus we find that religion, not medicine, gave birth to hospitals.

An accelerating influence in their growth came through the necessities of war, which threw large numbers of the injured and suffering upon communities quite unprepared to receive and minister to them.

It was to meet such a need that the first hospital was established in the United States on Manhattan Island in 1658.

The "New Netherland Register" says "This hospital was established at the request of Surgeon Hendricksen Varrevauger for the reception of sick soldiers--who had been previously billeted on private families."

In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at Salem, Massachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717, a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the building of the first chartered hospital in the United States, which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed, and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church institution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals, where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their number than officers of the line--a strong evidence that infection is more dangerous than weapons of war."

The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful, and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused. It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung the fate of the armies.

Not only did this noble woman, with her band of thirty-seven nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals, but she instituted reform in sanitation which was adopted by hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens, is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its banners have been set up.

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found hospitals established by the Christian church--the greater number the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor in connection with nearly every mission station.

In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation--wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.

If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. There must be deaconess homes and hospital's for this, where also the sick poor who can rarely be properly cared for in their dark, crowded, unsanitary homes may find help. In answer to this double need, deaconess hospitals have been established.

"The deaconess nurse goes into the homes of the poor, bringing the skilled touch of the nurse and the loving heart of Christian womanhood to the service of the neediest. Contagion has no terrors for her; Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary conditions are matters of every-day occurrence. No service so quickly opens the heart to good influences as that which comes in hours of deepest need and helplessness, to lead the heart through human tenderness to the Source of all goodness and love. Whole families have been won to Christ through the services of a Christian nurse.

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