Works Of Mercy Research Articles

Cheshire Homes

What a distance there is between the words ‘works of mercy’ and that irritating slogan of prosperity, ‘We've never had it so good'.It is the distance between the good Samaritan and the welfare state.Perhaps it is true that people in England are being better cared for than ever before. It is comfortable to believe that most of the natural tragedies of humanity—sickness, old age, incurable disabilities—come under some heading or other in health services or charitable organizations, and that everyone is taken care of ‘from the cradle to the grave'. We only have to look a very little way under the surface and behind the scenes to know that it is not true.It is a sad fact that all round us are numbers of men, women and children, chronically sick, or dying slowly of incurable disease, or so severely and permanently disabled that it is not possible for them to live anywhere but in the ‘chronic’ wards of hospitals, where their very beds are often needed for more curable patients.

Blessed are the Merciful

The articles in this number on the works of mercy take the necessity of these works as axiomatic, as something so self-evident that it would be tedious to labour it. In this, surely, they are true to the spirit of St Vincent de Paul, who is the subject of the next article, by a Vincentian father, in honour of his tercentenary. The gospels leave us in no doubt at all about the Christian obligation of almsgiving—of'giving mercy'; all that the practical Christian is concerned to discuss is the matter of ways and means.Yet a little ‘theory', perhaps, may be useful in order to put this very practical, down-to-earth obligation in its full context of the Christian life. Why is almsgiving such a strict and universal duty? Because it is the acid test of charity. ‘If anyone says “I love God”, and hates his brother, he is a liar’ (I John iv, 20).

Trowbridge and O'Connor: Unpublished Correspondence, with Special Reference to Walt Whitman

T WO IMPORTANT early friends of Walt Whitman were William Douglas O'Connor (I832-I889)1 and John Townsend Trowbridge (i827-i9i6).2 Both were Bostonians, O'Connor by birth, although he spent most of his years in Philadelphia and Washington; Trowbridge by adoption, since he had come to Hub early in his writing career. Both, too, had met Whitman in Boston while he was working on his third (i86o) edition of Leaues of Grass, which Thayer and Eldridge were soon to publish. With gifts and encouragement both helped him carry on his work of mercy in the Washington hospitals. Like young John Burroughs, they were among the closest associates of Whitman in Washington, especially in the i86o's when Trowbridge was collecting material for his life of Salmon P. Chase,3 and O'Connor and Whitman were government employees. For a time Whitman stayed at the O'Connor home, where the three friends often engaged in lively disputes lasting to the early morning hours. Both subsequently became estranged from Whitman, O'Connor to return to the fold of idolaters after a ten-year (I872-I882) quarrel over Negro suffrage; Trowbridge always to remain at a judicial distance, repelled by the excesses of the Whitmaniacs. O'Connor was one of that considerable school of nineteenthcentury Irish American patriots and writers which has in no small

The Religion of the Future

IN an article “Brave New World Planning” in the Quarterly Review of April, W. J. Blyton stresses the importance of such values as freedom with discipline, personal character, room for spontaneity and the spiritual as a basis for a new world order. Character and not mechanisms must come first, and only a better and stronger religion will overthrow the passionate and evil religions which at present menace the world. Without that, democracy will not be enough, and Mr. Blyton argues that the League of Nations failed because its foundations were legalist, secular and without spiritual appeal, moral authority, or imaginative hold on the stormy wills of men. No future order, he urges, will last unless it is viewed as sacred by a vast majority who have to live under it. It must be loved and valued as England (or other patria) now is; as one's religion is; or one's family, personality and liberty. A wave of moral conviction and spiritual vision must pass over many nations, and the comprehensive order will grow out of close, friendly but not firmly defined relations. The entire mundane political business hinges on virtue, which can be analysed into conscientiousness, sympathy, self-discipline and moral insight, and great and good achievements are not officially inspired by law, resolution, or orders. Education in the limited materialist, utilitarian sense of the word is nought. To roll back the tide of Belial and Moloch we must oppose a true religion, instinct with love, works of mercy, the new life, the inescapable mysteries of life and death.

LVIII. Spenser's Seven Bead-Men and the Corporal Works of Mercy

After the Redcross Knight has been rescued from Orgoglio by Prince Arthur and from Despeyre by the wise and watchful Una, he is brought by the latter to the House of Holinesse, “Where he is taught repentaunce, and The way to heauenly blesse.” There Mercy, “a matrone graue and hore,” leads him to one of the places of his purification, a “holy Hospitall” in which are employed seven bead-men who spend their days in doing godly works. The first of them, as eldest and best, has charge and government of all the house, giving entertainment and lodging to all who come and go. The second has for his office the giving of food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty. A third has in custody the common wardrobe, from which he dispenses “clothes meet to keepe keene could away,/ And naked nature seemely to aray.” A fourth is appointed for the relieving of prisoners and the redeeming of captives. A fifth cares for the sick and comforts those lying at the point of death. Still a sixth bead-man superintends the burial of the dead, lest the wondrous workmanship of God's own mould might be defouled.

Our Responsibility as Nurses to Our Profession

IN thinking about the subject of this paper, I was impelled to reframe the title that we might think together in the first rather than in the third person. "Our Responsibility as Nurses to our Profession" makes us partners in whatever we may enjoy of success or whatever we may have to face in the light of failure. You and I are "the nurses" to which we are wont to refer, and it is we who must share the joys, shoulder the burdens, and assume the responsibilities which are thrust upon ourselves and our professional colleagues. We no longer are a little band of sisters following Saint Vincent de Paul, but a great army of professional women scattered throughout the world, still holding sacredly to the ideals of service which motivated the works of mercy and love of the earliest of our leaders. We are members of one vast sisterhood united by tangible bonds of human service woven in and out of every phase of life; a great body of professional women now bound together by the broad ultimate objectives of our nursing associations. When we are assembled at one of our biennial conventions, we are conscious of a oneness of spirit; we are at home with each other for the reason that we are a family and feel a sisterly relationship. Our experiences, though different in many respects, have been similar, and we understand the language of life in joy, in sorrow, and even in death. As nurses we live with human beings in life's varied experiences and share with them the trials and vicissitudes of life, with their resulting disciplines. Nursing is intrinsically interpreted through the story of the Good Samaritan and through the teachings of Him who charged His disciples to minister unto all those who called upon them for help. In this age of confusion, in the midst of scattered and irresponsible thinking, we seem not to remember that the profession of nursing is different from that of many other vocations, and that its problems, which are never static, cannot be solved by similar arbitrary and mechanical means. Consequently, nurses cannot endeavor to meet these problems according to a definite standardized pattern. Our responsibilities change as life changes with us. As we grow older we are prone to act in given situations in accord with familiar patterns of behavior, forgetting that to meet life's changes we must learn a series of new responses in place of those which have lost their value and often even their usefulness. It is never safe to assume that what has been must always continue to be. The youth of today is born into a world different from that of many of us who are attempting to mold their professional lives and dictate the pattern they are to follow. After groping and deep heart-searching we have found it wise to discard, one after another, certain of our cherished traditions because they cannot be accepted by our colleagues of

War and Civilization

Previous articleNext article FreeWar and CivilizationGeorge SartonGeorge Sarton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 2, Number 2Sep., 1919 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/357864 Views: 293 Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Geert J. Somsen A History of Universalism: Conceptions of the Internationality of Science from the Enlightenment to the Cold War, Minerva 46, no.33 (Sep 2008).https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-008-9105-zChristoph Meinel Sarton, Science, and the End of History, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 8, no.33 (Jan 1985): 173–179.https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.19850080307

Medical Guild of the Misericordia.

Westboro, Mass., July 10, 1899. To the Editor. —The Medical Guild of the Misericordia is a society of medical practitioners and medical students interested in the work of mercy for the sorrowing and suffering. The guild comprises an order of brothers and associate communicants of the Anglo-Catholic Church in every land, with priests as chaplains whenever their services are required. The relief it seeks to afford in corporal works of mercy is: To feed the hungry; to give drink to the thirsty; to clothe the naked; to rescue the fallen; to visit the prisoner; to shelter the stranger; to visit the sick, and to bury the dead. Members of the guild obligate themselves to engage in any or all of the above works whenever occasion offers, and to consider it their especial duty to watch for opportunities for so doing. In a word, the object of the organization is to