"Another excellent hospital, that of St. John, at Turin, contained four hundred patients, male and female, besides its ward for sick children, and two for the bedridden and helpless poor, the whole being under the management of twenty-two religious women with forty-five assistants, and a large number of physicians and students. All was clean, neat, and cheerful. I was particularly struck by the neatness with which the food was served; men brought it up in large trays, but the ladies themselves distributed it. There was a little dog with its forepaws resting on one of the beds and its eyes steadfastly fixed on the sick man, with a pathetic, wistful expression, while a girl knelt beside him, to whom one of the sisters was speaking words of comfort.
"In this and other hospitals is an excellent arrangement for the night-watch. It was a large sentry-box of octagon shape, looking each way, the upper part all of glass, but furnished with curtains, and on a table were writing materials, medicines, and restoratives, linen napkins, etc. Two sisters watched here all night; here the accounts were kept, and privacy secured, when necessary, for the ladies on duty.
"The Marchese A----, one of the governors of the Hospice de la Maternité, described to us in terms of horror the state in which he had found the establishment when under the management of a board of governors, who employed hired matrons and nurses. { 53} At last, in despair, he sent for some trained sisters, ten of whom, with a superior, now directed the whole in that spirit of order, cheerfulness, and unremitting attention which belongs to them.
"We cannot," he said, "give them unlimited means, for these good ladies think that all should go to the poor; but if we allow them a fixed sum, we find they can do more with it than we could have believed possible, and they never go beyond it; they are admirable accountants and economists.
"In the great civil hospital at Vienna, larger even than the Hotel Dieu of Paris, the Sisters of Charity were being introduced some twelve years ago when Mrs. J. visited it.
"The disorderly habits and the want of intelligence in the paid female nurses had induced the managers to invite the co-operation of the religious sisters, though it was at first against their will. In the Hospital of Saint John, at Salzburg, the same change had been found necessary.