Infirmaries, hospitals for invalids, field lazarettos.

Johann Beckmann

Date:: [1846]

Credit: Infirmaries, hospitals for invalids, field lazarettos. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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not be some sick, especially as the inconvenience, fatigue, and dangers of the journey were much increased by many things injurious to the health. b But as the principal and most dangerous pilgrimages were made to Palestine, which is situated beyond the boundaries ot b,urope, where no countrymen, and not even Christians, one of whose religious duties it is to be compassionate, could be expected, institutions for the reception of sound as well as of sick pilgrims were erected by the clergy at a very early period on the road thither, and also at the holy places. Thus Jerome built an hospital at Bethlem; and hi? friend Paula caused several to be erected on the road to that village, in order that the devout idlers, as she says, might fare better than the mother of God, who, on her necessary journey thi- ther, could find no inn». In the like manner, the Scots and Jnsh erected hospitals in France for the use of their country- men, who, on their pilgrimage to Rome, might be desirous of passing through that kingdom2. But hospitals were most necessary in wild and desert parts, where human habitations were not to be expected; and par-' ticularly in woody mountainous districts, and on the banks of broad rivers, where travellers were stopped for the want of budges, and collected together in great numbers. It is pro- bable that many of these hospitals may have given rise to the Milages which are still found in such situations. Pope Adrian I. recommended to thenotice of Charlemagne > the hospitals built in the Alps; and in the year 855, the em- peror Louis II. caused those situated on mountains to be visited and repaired4. The ruins of many of these edifices still exist. Towards the end of the eleventh century, brotherhoods, which undertook to provide for the wants of sick pilorims were formed in the Holy Land; and these became richer and more numerous as the crusades increased. It was not un- — l°r PeTnS’ WllGn dyin%’ to ^queathe their BonTnH i “tablis,hments *n wbich they had found consola- tion and relief; and very often those who had experienced a 2 Hieron. Epitaph. Paula;. 325°“ Ana1' ajd 845’.yxvi-Mama. Lure 1743, tom. xiv. P‘frX.‘ a 3 Muratori Antiq. Ital. Med. iEvi iii n 4 lb. et Antiquitat. Ital. Med. JEvi, iii. p. 581. ’ P* 581‘

Infirmaries, hospitals for invalids, field lazarettos.

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