ART. VI. THE WORLD'S NEED OF WOMAN. 1. Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, Abroad and at Home. By MRS. JAMESON. 1855. 2. The Communion of Labor. By MRS. JAMESON. 1856. Republished in one volume by Ticknor and Fields, Boston. 1859. 3. Reports and Realities from the Sketch-Book of a Manager of the Rosine Association. Philadelphia: John Duross, Printer. 1855. MRS. JAMESON's special object, in both her books, is to enforce the necessity of men and women's working together in beneficence, technically so called. She appears to have been struck and stimulated by a fact which a recent census had developed in Great Britain, namely, that there are in that island five hundred thousand more women than men. She considers this a providential indication that women are destined to other employments than the strictly maternal and wifely. If five thousand, that is one hundredth, of these five hundred thousand women could employ themselves in nursing the sick poor, and reforming the guilty, much more than a thousandth párt of the misery of Great Britain would be relieved, and all who did it would be ennobled by the work, which, if only one sex are engaged, women can do better than men, and which would be done still better than if they worked alone, should they work in concurrence with men. She fortifies her views by quoting the well-considered declarations of Howard and other thoughtful philanthropists, respecting the arrangements of Continental institutions of charity, giving historical sketches of the Hospitalières, an order of women founded in the seventh century, who have nursed for the last thousand years, in the Hôtel Dieu, with its thousand beds, in the St. Louis, with its seven hundred beds,and in La Pitié, with its six hundred beds;-of the Beguines, who for an equal length of time have served in all the hospitals of Flanders, and one portion of them, the Sisters of St. Martha, in three hospitals in Paris, and several in the South of France; of the Gray Sisters, founded in the thirteenth century, among whom, she says, "have been enrolled queens, princesses, ladies of rank, wives of burghers, as well as widows and maidens," for this order did not take vows of celibacy, or seclude themselves in cloisters, but were simply bound to submit to certain rules and regulations, training them to do good whenever and wherever called upon; of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth in Hungary and Germany, who, together with the Beguines and Ursulines, were excepted by Joseph II. from his general proscription of the religious orders, "because of the usefulness of their vocation;" and, finally, of the Sisters of Charity, who originated, as Mrs. Jameson says, rather with Madame Legras than with Vincent St. Paul. What she says with respect to the inception of this last order is of such importance to our general subject that we must extract it. - "While the men who professed the healing art were generally astrologers and alchymists, dealing in charms and nativities, lost in dreams of the Elixir Vitæ and the Philosopher's Stone, and in such mummeries and quackeries as made them favorite subjects for comedy and satire, these simple sisters in their hospitals were accumulating a vast fund of practical and traditional knowledge of the treatment of disease, and the use of various remedies, knowledge which was turned to account and condensed into rational theory and sound method, when, in the sixteenth century, surgery and medicine first rose to the rank of experimental sciences, and were studied as such. The poor Hospitalières knew nothing of Galen and Hippocrates, but they could observe, if they could not describe, and prescribe, if they could not demonstrate. Still, in the course of time, great abuses certainly crept into these religious societies; not so bad or so flagrant, perhaps, as those which disgraced, within a recent period, many of our own incorporated charities; but bad enough, and vitiating, if not destroying, their power to do good. The funds were sometimes misappropriated, the novices ill-trained for their work, the superiors careless, the sisters mutinous, the treatment of the sick rude and empirical. Women of sense and feeling, who wished to enroll themselves in these communities, were shocked and discouraged by such a state of things. A reform became absolutely necessary. "This was brought about, and very effectually, about the middle of the seventeenth century. "Louise de Marillac, better known as Madame Legras, when left a widow in the prime of life, could find, like Angela da Brescia (founder of the Ursulines in 1537), 'no better refuge from sorrow than in active duties undertaken for the love of God.' She desired to join the Hospitalières, and was met at the outset by difficulties, and even hor rors, which would have extinguished a less ardent vocation, a less determined will. She set herself to remedy these evils, instead of shrinking from them. She was assisted and encouraged in her good work by a man endued with great ability and piety, enthusiasm equal, and moral influence even superior to her own. This was the famous Vincent St. Paul, who had been occupied for years with a scheme to reform thoroughly the prisons and hospitals of France. In Madame Legras he found a most efficient coadjutor. With her charitable impulses and religious enthusiasm, she united qualities not always nor often found in union with them, a calm and patient temperament, and that administrative faculty indispensable in those who are called to such privileged work. She was particularly distinguished by a power of selecting and preparing the instruments, and combining the means, through which she was to carry out her admirable purpose. With Vincent St. Paul and Madame Legras was associated another person, Madame Gossant, who besieged the Archbishop of Paris till what was refused to reason was granted to importunity, and they were permitted to introduce various improvements into the administration of the hospitals. . . . . . A lower class of sisters were trained to act under the direction of the more intelligent and educated women. Within twenty years this new community had two hundred houses and hospitals; in a few years more it had spread over all Europe. Madame Legras died in 1660. Already, before her death, the women, prepared and trained under her instructions, and under the direction of Vincent St. Paul, (and here we have another instance of the successful communion of labor,) had proved their efficiency on some extraordinary occasions. In the campaigns of 1652 and 1658, they were sent to the field of battle, in groups of two and four together, to assist the wounded. They were invited into the besieged towns to take charge of the military hospitals. They were particularly conspicuous at the siege of Dunkirk, and in the military hospitals established by Anne of Austria at Fontainebleau. When the plague broke out in Poland in 1672, they were sent to the hospitals in Warsaw, and to take charge of the orphans, and were thus introduced into Eastern Europe; and, stranger than all they were even sent to the prison-infirmaries, where the branded forçats and condemned felons lay cursing and writhing in their fetters. This was a mission for Sisters of Charity which may startle the refined, or confined, notions of Englishwomen in the nineteenth century. . . . . . The same experiment has been lately tried, and with success, in the prisons of Piedmont. . . . . . The hardest of these wretches had probably some remembrance of a mother's voice and look thus recalled, or he could at least feel gratitude for sym ... pathy from a purer, higher nature. As an element of reformation, I might almost say of regeneration, this use of the feminine influence has been found efficient where all other means have failed." She goes on to quote authorities on this last point. Howard attributes the superiority of French to English prisons to "the employment and intervention of women in a manner, he says, which has no parallel in England," and Mrs. Jameson laments that the striking remarks and suggestions respecting the influence of women, which abound in Howard's works, do not seem to have been noticed; for he bears testimony not only to the neatness and bodily comfort which the presence of women insures, but to their medical knowledge and pharmaceutic science. In the hospital of Bruges, he says, "they prepare as well as administer medicines. The Directress of the Pharmacy celebrated last year her jubilee, or fiftieth year of residence in the hospital." Describing the principal hospital at Lyons, attended by nine physicians and surgeons, and managed by twelve Sisters of Charity, he says: "There were sisters who made up, as well as administered, all the medicines prescribed; for which purpose there was a laboratory and apothecary's shop, the neatest and most elegantly fitted up that can be conceived." Mrs. Jameson herself visited a hospital in Vienna of fifty beds, ministered to by the Elizabethan sisters. She says: "On the ground floor was an extensive Pharmacy, a sort of Apothecary's Hall. Part of this was divided off by a long table or counter, and surrounded by shelves filled with drugs, much like an apothecary's shop. Behind the counter, two sisters, with their sleeves turned up, were busy, weighing and compounding medicines with such a delicacy, neatness, and exactitude as women use in such matters. . . . . A physician and surgeon appointed by the government visited this hospital, and were resorted to in cases of difficulty, or where operations were necessary. Here was another instance in which men and women worked together harmoniously and efficiently.” The reformation of the guilty is a kind of work in which there is a crying need of women, not merely or chiefly on account of their tenderness, but because of the strong moral characteristic of the female mind. In this department, Catho lic women, however, cannot be expected to have especially great results, as the Catholic religion makes small account of moral and intellectual science, and by consequence its devotees know but one method, namely, to quench the passions by superstitious submission, and in an agony of conscience to give up that will which makes men moral agents in the first place. Religious excitement is all the discipline that they can recommend. Our Protestant women have not this subtraction from their resources, and, as Mrs. Jameson says, "the expedient of bringing the female mind and temperament to bear on the masculine brain, (and, of course, vice versa,) as a physical and moral resource, is worth a thought; being in accordance with that law of nature, or Divine ordinance, which placed the two sexes under mutual and sympathetic influences; not always, as the stupid and profligate suppose, for evil and temptation, but for good and healing; not in one or two relations of life, but in every possible relation in which they can be approximated." We must refer our readers to the books of Mrs. Jameson for a large amount of encouraging and excellent remark that we have not space to quote, and which, we think, will convince any one who may be inclined to doubt, that the communion of men and women in the work of medicating both mind and body, when diseased, is altogether more desirable than the employment of only one sex; and that woman should predominate in this field of labor. Nor is it true, as it may be suggested, that women dominated by the Roman Catholic Church are, on that account, better fitted even for hospital charity. There are Protestant associations which prove the contrary. Mrs. Jameson gives the history of Kaiserwerth, where Miss Florence Nightingale went through a regular course of training before she took charge of the Female Sanitarium in London; and similar institutions for the training of Protestant nurses and teachers have been opened at Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin, Dresden, and ten other places, all emanating from the same source (Kaiserwerth), and counting hundreds of members. This is conclusive, as we wish we could show by extracting all her narrative. For Kaiserwerth was only founded in 1833, and in - |