Surely the deaconess cause is striking deep root in the
religious life of Protestant Europe. During Fliedner's life-time
occasions arose which called the deaconesses outside their accustomed
fields of work, and proved their value in the exceptional emergencies
that so often arise. Here is an instance that occurred during the early
days of the establishment:[40]

"An epidemic of nervous fever was raging in two communes of the circle
of Duisburg, Gartrop, and Gahlen. Its first and most virulent outbreak
took place at Gartrop, a small, poor, secluded village of scarcely one
hundred and thirty souls, without a doctor, without an apothecary in the
neighborhood, while the clergyman was upon the point of leaving for
another parish, and his successor had not yet been appointed. Four
deaconesses, including the superior, Pastor Fliedner's wife, and a maid,
hastened to this scene of wretchedness, and found from twenty to
twenty-five fever patients in the most alarming condition, a mother and
four children in one hovel, four other patients in another, and so on,
all lying on foul straw, or on bed-clothes that had not been washed for
weeks, almost without food, utterly without help. Many had died already;
the healthy had fled; the parish doctor lived four German leagues off,
and could not come every day. The first care of the sisters, who would
have found no lodging but for the then vacancy of the parsonage, was to
introduce cleanliness and ventilation into the narrow cabins of the
peasants; they washed and cooked for the sick, they watched every night
by turns at their bed-side, and tended them with such success that only
four died after their arrival, and the rest were only convalescent after
four weeks' stay. The same epidemic having broken out in the neighboring
commune of Gahlen, in two families, of whom eight members lay ill at
once, a single deaconess was able, in three weeks, to restore every
patient to health, and to prevent the further spread of the disease.
What would not our doctors give for a few dozen of such hard-working,
zealous, intelligent ministers in the field of sanitary reform?"

The Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864 was the first in which Protestant
deaconesses were active as nurses. Already in the Crimean war the Greek
Sisters of Charity among the Russians, the Sisters of Mercy among the
French, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Stanley among the English, had
wakened the liveliest gratitude on the part of the so