Hospitals in the Middle Ages.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 22, 29 May 1902, Page 15

Hospitals in the Middle Ages.

The middle Ages are a fruitful source of non-Catholio misconception and mis-statement. Some of our esteemed separated brethren (says the Sacred Heart Review) are firmly convinced that nothing except what was dark and evil existed in those times. Of course they are wrong ; and, as the world grows older, religious bigotry dies out, and more exact research is made in the annals of the Middle Ages, facts surprisingly to the credit of those days are brought out. Here, for instance, is a statement from the February number of the A ational Hospital Record, showing what enlightened ideas prevailed in the Middle Ages regarding hospitals : ' The hospitals founded in France in the Middle Ages were a hobby of the great lords, to whom they owe their origin, and they surprise one by the enlightened views manifested in their construction. Built on a a scale not inferior to that on which the great churches and abbeys of the period were planned, they formed a marked contrast to the hospitals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were lofty, well-lighted, and of massive construction, and the internal fittings were almost luxurious. Unlike the terrible state of things at the Hotel Dieu in Paris in the eighteenth century where several patients occupied one bed, the beds were placed in cubicles, with wooden partitions, and were each occupied by one patient only. In that at Tonnerre, a gallery ran round the ward, from which the cubicles could be overlooked by the attendants, and which sheltered the patients from glaie and draughts from the tall windows above. These could be opened when necessary, and holes in the window-panes provided constant ventilation. The ward is ninety yards loug by nineteen yards wide, and is proportionately lofty, with a timbered ceiling. It was provided for forty patients on'y. This hospital was built by Marguerite of Burgundy in the thirteenth century.