Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/796

 776 warrior's memory will be buried out of sight. She founded two hospitals in Eisenach, and another in Marburg, into which the twenty-two-years-old widow retired. The rule was to nurse the female sick only. But when Francis-Joseph and Windischgrätz (par nobile fratrum) let loose their Croats over unhappy Vienna, in our own times in 1848, the Sisters of St. Elizabeth were in the front ranks bringing aid and comfort.

In 1171 the orders of St. Protais and St. Gervais were founded in France. About the same time, the houses in Roncesvalles and Burgos. In 1409 José Gilaberto established an order in Valencia for the special purpose of nursing the lunatic.

Those I have mentioned, with several others, were orders founded by the Church, or whose supervision soon became clerical. Those which, though all of them were anxious to submit to the Church, for spiritual reasons, succeeded in retaining their autonomy, must be credited with more real success in accomplishing their ends. Among the first we have any information of is the order of St. Catherine. Its members nursed poor and strange women and girls three days, and buried those who died in prisons or in the streets. In those good old times to which many dissatisfied hearts of to-day look back with longing eyes, those good olden times with their innocence, simplicity, and piety, this dying in the street was of common occurrence, and the Sisters of St. Catherine had plenty of work. We have not only accumulated seven more centuries, but gained more safety, more comfort, and more confidence in the future of mankind.

In the Hôtel-Dieu, the immense Paris hospital, thirty-eight men and thirty-eight women served as nurses. The places were, in later centuries, filled by Sisters of Mercy.

The Brothers of Mercy were founded in 1534 by Juan di Dios (John of God) in Granada. They were laymen, entered the order at between eighteen and thirty-one years of age, and nursed the sick of every faith and creed. Within a hundred years they possessed 18 hospitals, and there was a time when in Spain and the West Indies they had 138 hospitals, with 4,140 beds, and 47,000 sick annually, and in the rest of Europe 155 hospitals, 7,210 beds, and 150,000 sick. Twenty-five years ago they had in Austria alone 29 hospitals, with 20,000 patients.

Of similar character were the Obregons, founded about 1600, with their complicated duties of nursing the sick, praying, and repenting. This multitude of duties must have crippled their efficiency; they can not compare with the Brothers of Mercy.

The “Bons Fils” (Good Boys) were founded in Flanders in 1615. They were tradesmen, with the duties of nursing the sick, mainly the alienated in their homes, and giving elementary instruction.

The Confraternita della Perseveranza was established in Rome, in 1663, for the purpose of caring for the strangers in the taverns.