Volume 1

The history of St. Thomas's Hospital / by F.G. Parsons.

Frederick Gymer Parsons

Date:: 1932-1936

Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The history of St. Thomas's Hospital / by F.G. Parsons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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induced him to give to the Priory the Church of St. Margaret which stood nearby on St. Margaret’s Hill, close to where the war memorial is now. Later Stephen, who was interested too, confirmed this gift and added the stone house of Pont de l’Arche, near Downegate or Dowgate, which somehow had come into his possession. There is some doubt as to whether GifTard was in England in 1106, in which case Pont de 1’Arche and Dauncey may have begun the work without him. The plans, however, must have been prepared long before the actual building commenced; and Giffard was certainly back again in 1107. The Order of Augustine Canons was one which was specially adapted to minister to the sick because its rule was so much lighter in spiritual duties than was that of the monks, and the opening clause of the rule of St. Augustine, their founder, runs : “ Before all things, dearest brethren, let God be loved, then your neighbour.” Its brethren seem indeed to have fore¬ shadowed the grey or ministering friars whom St. Francis of Assisi founded in 1209 ; and there can be little doubt that, as soon as they were established in Southwark, their infirmarium became a hospital for the sick and infirm who passed along the great high¬ way to London. It is noteworthy that when Rahere founded St. Bartholomew’s Priory and Hospital in 1123, to play the same part in the north of London which St. Mary’s was playing in the south, he staffed it too with Augustine canons. No doubt one, or perhaps more, of the canons of St. Mary the Virgin specialized in medicine and became “ infirmarii ” which, after all, is only an

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