Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/495

Rh gangrene. Pastor Fleidner, with his training school at Kaiserworth, and the Sisters of Charity in Paris and at the great General Hospital in Vienna, had practised, if they had not preached, this doctrine for a long time. It remained for the Crimean War and the dramatic demonstration of her doctrine by Miss Nightingale to convince the profession at large and the public. How it was accomplished is an oft-told tale. The later teaching of bacteriology in medical schools confirmed the claims for hospital cleanliness; hospital gangrene and epidemic erysipelas have disappeared.

Now is the golden age of the hospital; we need no statistics to convince us of this. Every American community of any size has not only a hospital, but a training school, and the old public distrust of the institution is on the wane with the improvement in methods and administration. To-day the patient approaches it with confidence instead of apprehension, with alacrity instead of with reluctance, and with the hope of life rather than with the fear of death.