The inn of rest : divers episodes in hospital life relative to the doctor, the nurse, the patient / edited by Sheldon E. Ames.

  • Ames, Sheldon E.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The inn of rest : divers episodes in hospital life relative to the doctor, the nurse, the patient / edited by Sheldon E. Ames. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/293 (page 36)
    IV. HOSPITALS. mm LREADY, before Christmas, hearts are kindling S| with the Christmas spirit, and the season set i] apart especially by Englishmen to deeds of hos- 4 pitality, is declaring itself to most of us with a rich loving kindness, redundantly kind. What more seasonable topic can there be, therefore, just now, than hospitals, their name and purpose being, in the truest sense, a part of hospitality? Better still for the Christmas application of the word, they are essentially a part of hospitality as it has been in- terpreted by Christians. We have the word from ancient Rome. The hospes are guests, and whether of a private person or of a temple or of the whole state had a sacred character; Jupiter Hospitalis was their patron, and avenged their wrongs. The hospitale was the name of the guest-chamber in a Roman’s house; that was the first idea of a hospital. The stranger introduced to his host by the recommendation of a third person, was safe within the gates of his protector, who was not necessarily his entertainer; for, after one dinner with the family, the stranger generally dined in the hospitale, and paid for his food. Among the early Greeks these customs of hos- pitality were kept alive by the religious notion that any unknown person might prove to be a god come in dis- guise. The guest of the Greeks, too, had Zeus for his pe- culiar friend. Besides social and political uses, there was mutual advantage to be had by Greeks and Romans out of their own customs of hospitality. The nursing of the sick poor formed no part of them with either people. The crowd of sick people lying in the open air round about the temple of #sculapius at Epidaurus, formed the