ound. The brethren go about the beds administering the
last offices of the Church to the dying. The food is scanty: the
appliances are rude: there is small hope of recovery: yet to die in
hospital tended and consoled instead of in the hut where life has been
passed is something for which to be grateful.
[Illustration: THE UPPER CHAMBER OR SOLAR AT SUTTON COURTENAY
MANOR-HOUSE.
(_Date, about 1350._)]
Consider into how great, how noble a Foundation the little hospital of
Rahere has grown. The modern hospital contains 676 beds: it receives
about 150,000 patients every year, of whom 7,000 are inpatients, 18,000
out patients, and 130,000 casuals. The eight brethren have become 30
physicians and surgeons besides the assistants called clinical clerks
and dressers. The four sisters are now 159 sisters and nurses. There is
a noble school of medicine: there are museums, libraries, lecture rooms,
and there is a residential college for medical students: there is a
convalescent hospital in the country. No hospital in the world has a
larger or a more noble record than this of St. Bartholomew. And it all
sprang from the resolution of one man, who started a humble house for
the reception of the sick in a poor and despised place outside the City
wall, but near to the Shambles where one could beg for broken victuals
and for the pieces of meat that the butchers could not sell. Thus out of
one good deed, apparently of small importance, has grown a never-ending
stream of refreshment and healing. It has lasted for 700 years already:
there seems no reason why it should ever stop.
21. THE TERROR OF LEPROSY.
One mile outside the City walls, on the west, stood for four hundred
years the Hospital of St. Giles in the Fields.
Here was a Lazar House, i.e. a Hospital for Lepers. It was founded by
Maud, Queen of Henry I. It was dedicated to St. Giles because this saint
was considered the protector of cripples. Hence the name Cripplegate,
which really means the Little Gate, was applied to the church of St.
Giles, and supposed to mean the gate near the church dedicated to the
Patron Saint of Cripples. A common result of leprosy was to make the
sufferer lame and crippled. Hence the connection. Generally, however,
Lazarus, whom our Lord raised from the dead, was esteemed the Saint of
Lepers, whence a Leper's Hospital was always called a Lazar House.
In the middle ages the mysterious disease called leprosy was an ever
present terror.
|