The Modern Hospice

Abstract

In 1986, Cicely Saunders' close friend and fellow hospice pioneer from Yale, Florence Wald, organized a colloquium to examine the spiritual component of hospice care and its relationship to more formal religious influences. At the symposium, a paper by Cicely Saunders explored this issue with a broad overview of the history of hospices since early times and went on to present the findings of a survey she had previously undertaken in England. The paper is also important in paying tribute to the important role played by the theologian Dr Olive Wyon in the development of Cicely Saunders' ideas about the religious character of St Christopher's Hospice and was to serve as an important stimulus to much subsequent thinking about the nature of ‘spiritual care’ at the end of life.