Note 191 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
"In the municipal and state institutions of this period the beautiful gardens, roomy halls and springs of water of the old cloistral hospital of the Middle Ages were not heard of, still less the comforts of their friendly interiors." A History of Nursing, Vol. I, p. 500, M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia L. Dock, New York, 1907.
The mortality in some of the state hospitals from the latter part of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century was appalling, often as high as fifty and sixty per cent. This was due not only to shockingly unsanitary conditions, but also to inordinate overcrowding. A large proportion of the beds, incredible as it may seem, were purposely made for four patients, and six were frequently crowded into them. "The extraordinary spectacle was then to be seen of two or three small-pox cases, or several surgical cases, lying on one bed." John Howard, in his Prisons and Hospitals, pp. 176-177. Warrington, 1874, tells us of two hospitals that were so crowded that he had "often seen five or six patients in one bed, and some of them dying."
It is gratifying to learn that the chief agents in changing this revolting condition, due to faulty construction and management of hospitals, were women. Prominent among these benefactors of humanity were Mme. Necker, Florence Nightingale, and the wise and alert superiors of the various nursing sisterhoods.