ost
thoroughly, and one is tempted to wonder if like investigation in
other directions would not have shown him the error of prejudiced
views he harbored with regard to other phases of the beneficent
influence of the Popes in history. More knowledge is all that is
needed, as a rule, to overcome all the anti-Papal prejudices founded
on supposed historical grounds.

Indeed, Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent III. as the initiator of
all this humanitarian work is so frank and outspoken that, coming as
it does from a man whose sympathies with the Papacy were well known to
be the slightest, it deserves to be recalled in its completeness, in
order that another factor for the vindication of Innocent's character
may be better known. The great pathologist said: "The beginning of the
history of all of these German hospitals is connected with the name of
that Pope who made the boldest and farthest-reaching attempt to gather
the sum of human interests into the organization of the Catholic
Church. The hospitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means by
which Innocent III. thought to hold humanity to the Holy See. And
surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not calculated to
create the most profound impression to see how the mighty Pope, who
humbled emperors and deposed kings, who was the unrelenting adversary
of the Albigenses, turned his eyes sympathetically upon the poor and
sick, sought the helpless and the neglected upon the streets, and
saved the illegitimate children from death in the waters! There is
something at once conciliating and fascinating in the fact, that at
the very time when the fourth crusade was inaugurated through his
influence, the thought of founding a great {258} organization of an
essentially humane character, which was eventually to extend
throughout all Christendom, was also taking form in his soul; and that
in the same year (1204) in which the new Latin Empire was founded in
Constantinople, the newly erected hospital of the Holy Spirit, by the
old bridge on the other side of the Tiber, was blessed and dedicated
as the future centre of this organization." [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: Virchow's article on the German hospitals is to be found
in the second volume of his collection of essays on Public Medicine
and the History of Epidemics, which is, unfortunately, not translated
into English, so far as I know, but will have to be consulted in the
original Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete