a point of view, however, I may say at once, such a freedom of good
will, such a warmth of sympathy from purely human motives as would
be expected in these conditions, are only to be found in very
unaccustomed goodness of {264} disposition, or an extent of ethical
education such as cannot be found in most of those who give
themselves at the present time to the services of the sick in the
hospitals. If pure humanity is to be a motive, then other circles of
society must be induced to take part in the care of the sick. Our
training schools for nurses must teach very differently to what they
do at present, if the care of the sick in municipal hospitals shall
compare favorably with that given them in religious institutions.
Our hospitals must become transformed into true humanitarian
institutions."

While some of this striking opinion of Virchow's was derived from
personal experience with hospitals managed by religious, it must not
be forgotten that such hospitals are rarer in Germany, at least in the
north, than almost anywhere else in the world. His opportunities then
were limited, and undoubtedly much of his favorable persuasions in
this regard was founded on his investigation of conditions as he had
learned to know them in the old-time hospitals of the later Middle
Ages. The traditions as to the treatment of patients in these early
times are such as to make us believe that hospital attendants did take
their work seriously from a very lofty motive, and that while medicine
and surgery were much less effective than in more modern times, the
tender care of patients did as much as was possible to make inevitable
suffering more bearable, and to keep the sight of painfully
approaching death from being a source of discouragement and even of
despair.

We have the best evidence, that of a contemporary, as to the
conditions which obtained in these medieval hospitals, and the
dispositions of the attendants as regards their religious duties would
seem to be an unmistakable {265} index as to their willingness to
sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of the patients. The well
known Jacques de Vitry, who had been Bishop of Acre and afterwards
Cardinal, and whose wide travel had given him many opportunities to
judge for himself, said:

"There are innumerable congregations, both of men and women,
renouncing the world and living regularly in leper houses and
hospitals of the poor, humbly and devoutly m