Spiritual formation, secularization, and reform of professional nursing and education in antebellum America.

The origin story of professional nursing associated with antebellum American faith communities is all but lost. This paper provides historical evidence for professional nursing for that period using a case study approach that examines three faith communities: the Sisters and Daughters of Charity, the Shakers, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The purpose is to present an historical analysis of the three communities' health beliefs, recipes and remedies that were foundational to the spiritual formation and education of professional nurses within their communities. The focus of the analysis is to place the evidence for professional nursing in these faith communities within the broader context of the contemporary American narrative of the "secularization" of professional nursing associated with the adoption of the Nightingale Training Model after 1873. Nursing became a profession in America because of the courage and passion of many for spiritual formation in community around a need to relieve suffering and demonstrate kindness. The history of American nursing is comprised of stories of powerful nurse ancestors that have the potential to inspire and unite us in that same purpose today despite the ambiguities that may still exist around spirituality, religiosity, and secularization.

Reception of Homeopathy by the Hungarian Churches and Clericals during the 19-20. Centuries. / A prevenció gondolata az 1876. évi közegészségügyi törvényben..

This study gives a special overview of the history of homeopathy in Flungary focusing exclusively on the attitude of the Elungarian churches regarding this new healing method. Authors attempt to prove, that homeopathy actually was a system rooting in Christianity, and according to this fact several priests and eccelesiastical persons took part in the propagation of the method, especially during the 19. century. The essay lists the most important Flunga- rian homeopathic doctors with special regard on their close connections to Catholic priests or bishops and on homeopathic hospitals supported by Christian churches.

[Drugs of a Baroque monastery pharmacy]. / Léky z barokní klásterní lékárny.

This paper deal with a manuscript from the years 1714-1720, originating most probably from the hospital of the Brothers of Mercy in Nové Mesto nad Metují. it contains the records of the hospital pharmacy about the drugs prepared for both patients and monks who operated this hospital. The included drugs were mainly intended for elderly males. The manuscript lists about fifteen hundred drugs and more than three hundred active ingredients, of which about two thirds were of plant origin. The paper presents the compositions of more important drugs and partly deals also with their preparation.

[Leprosy--a stigma in the 21st century]. / Lepra--stigma a XXI. században.

For the initiation of the French journalist Raoul Follereau in 1954 the UNO inaugurated the Leprosy Day (Martyr's Day) that is celebrated on the last Sunday of January every year. Although the bacterium that causes leprosy was isolated by the Norwegian scientist Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen in 1873 and from 1982 this disease can be cured with a special pharmaceutical complex, still 219.826 new leprous are detected on Earth every year, according to the data published in August, 2010 by WHO-experts. Ancient Chinese and Hindu source-strings from 600 B. C. are referring to leprosy, however, the disease was imported by the army of Alexander the Great from India around 327-326 B. C. Even the Old and the New Testament from the Holy Bible are mentioning leprosy in several details. During the Middle Ages the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, established in the Holy Land in 72 A. D., did pioneer work in nursing leprous. In the process of time the medical attendance concerning leprous was organized in special hospitals called "leprosoriums" built on river-banks. Special office and even services were organized for the treatment and isolation of the people infected. Although medical science has prevailed against leprosy, and almost simultaneously even jurisprudence defended the patients' rights via legislation, still mankind can regrettably not get rid of this disease that stigmatizes seriously.

Finance and faith at the Catholic Maternity Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1944-1969.

In 1944, the Medical Mission Sisters opened the Catholic Maternity Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, primarily to serve patients of Spanish American descent. The Maternity Institute offered nurse-midwifery care and functioned as a school to train nurse-midwifery students. Originally planned as a home birth service, the Catholic Maternity Institute soon evolved into a service in which patients chose whether to deliver in their own homes or in a small freestanding building called La Casita. In fact, despite their idealism about home birth and strong feelings that home birth was best, the sisters experienced significant ambivalence concerning La Casita. Births there met many of the institute's pragmatic needs for a larger number of student experiences, quick and safe transfers to a nearby hospital, and more efficient use of the midwives' time. Importantly, as the sisters realized that many of their patients preferred to deliver at La Casita, they came to see that this option permitted these impoverished patients an opportunity to exercise some choice. However, the choice of many patients to deliver at La Casita--which was significantly more expensive for the Maternity Institute than home birth--eventually led to the demise of the Maternity Institute.

[Ningbo Renze hospital in modern times].

After the Opium War in 1842, the Western forces came into China in great numbers. In order to give missionary sermons, the Anglican Mission set up Renze hospital in Ningbo in the 1870s. As the expansionist product of western imperialist powers in China, Renze hospital had colonial characteristics, but the missionaries' medical activities played a certain advocational role in the development of the medical health advancement of Ningbo in modern times, as well as a role in the changes in social values and bad habits.

[The establishment and development of Blyth hospital in Wenzhou].

Blyth hospital was the earliest church hospital established by western missionaries in Wenzhou, since then, western medicine had been introduced into Wenzhou. The establishment and development of Blyth hospital greatly accelerated the development of Wenzhou local medical and health work so that the health level of the Wenzhou people improved. The objectives, pattern, experience and characteristics of the establishment of the hospital played a certain revelatory role in modern medical work and medical education.

Maryknoll sisters, faith, healing, and the Maya construction of catholic communities in Guatemala

This article complements existing scholarship on religious transformation in Guatemala's western highlands by focusing on the important and often overlooked role played by Maryknoll women religious. The Maryknoll Sisters' hospital in Jacaltenango in the department of Huehuetenango became the center of a medical program that included eighteen clinics, a nursing school, a midwifery program, and a health promoters program. Mayas selectively embraced Maryknoll Sisters' medicine and actively sought opportunities to disseminate it. Even as Maya health promoters and midwives introduced "Western" preventative and curative medicine and promoted a Romanized practice of Catholicism, they transformed the Maryknoll Sisters' medical programs to parallel an existing Maya leadership composed of chimanes and midwives responsible for rituals of faith and healing. Mayas appropriated, interpreted, and synthesized Maya and Catholic religious concepts and practices with Maya and Western health-care practices and beliefs. By incorporating Maryknoll women religious and their medical programs into studies of religious transformation in Guatemala's western highlands, we gain new insight into this process of change and into the central role that women played in it. (AU)

[The origins of occupational therapy in Spain]. / Origen de la terapia ocupacional en España.

INTRODUCTION: Occupational therapy is a young discipline in many aspects, but since ancient times an important number of reports have appeared in the health sciences literature and in the early days of neurology and psychiatry that can shed light on the origins and the fundamental principles that underlie this profession today. We have gathered examples that show how the philosophy and the clinical practice of the procedures used in occupational therapy stem from the process of humanising medical care. AIMS: After analysing the information currently available to us on the history of the influence of humanism on the development of medicine in Spain, the authors believe they have found enough evidence to identify the precursors of occupational therapy at that point in history. DEVELOPMENT: Our study examines facts that appear to situate the earliest evidence of occupational therapy at the origins of Spanish neurology and psychiatry in the 15th century, and which were later to have such a powerful influence on the birth of certain aspects of Pinel's moral treatment. CONCLUSIONS: If we accept 'moral treatment' as being one of the main forerunners of occupational therapy, and if we take into account that the humanitarian way patients were dealt with in Spanish neurological and psychiatric institutions and hospitals in the 15th century had a notable influence on the principles that regulated that 'moral treatment', then it is reasonable to state that the earliest evidence of occupational therapy is to be found in the development of humanisation within Spanish medical care.

An early glimpse at western medicine in Jerusalem 1700-1840: the case of the Jews and the Franciscans' medical activity.

During the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, the monks of the Franciscan Order were the only representatives of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem and they provided medical treatment for Christians. This article looks at the activities of the Franciscans, in particular in their pharmacy, which was associated with the production of Jerusalem balsam, famous both in the East and in Europe. It compares these activities with those of Jewish physicians in Jerusalem and looks at the relationships between the two groups and their effects on medical development in the Levant.

[Health service organization during the age of pestilence.1]. / Excursus sull'organizzazione dell'assistenza in tempi di pestilenza. Prima parte.

The author outlines the history of the places where the patients with epidemic pathologies were isolated. Since the study of medicine began, they have been called asclepiei, xenodochi, hospices, lazarettos, sanitary cordons, and quarantine stations and they contribute to controlling epidemics in Europe. These structures, important not only in the situation in which they were created, expressed the medical culture and point of view of that age. Although very far from discovering the cause of the pathology due to their lack of scientific knowledge, the medical class sometimes knew effectively how to organize the isolation of patients. The history of these isolation sites interweaves with the church's life through the ages and with the reality of European states and of the city-states during the Italian renaissance. In classical Greece and in Imperial Rome there were also "homes for the sick" to isolate the patients. Today the world is periodically hit by epidemics. In these moments the medical class uses its research ability and exploits its organizational potential but it also uses historical memory to reduce contagion from the epidemic.

[From asklepieia to monasteries: the places of medical art in Antiquity]. / Per una storia dei luoghi dell'arte medica nell'antichità dagli asklepieia ai monasteri.

The article deals with the places of medical art in the antiquity. Author's intention is to give a description of the places where developed the assistance and welfare activity to sick people from the Asklepieia to Monastic Hospitals. In Theurgical Medicine the cure for sickness was peculiar to gods, at first to all gods, mostly to Apollo and Artemide; later healing art had an own god: Asclepius. In the temples of Asclepius, the Asklepieia, prayers, sacrifices, offerings and magical rituals began to be associated with medical practical exercise and rational therapeutic systems. Rational Hippocratic Medicine found own places in the cities: the iatreia in Greece and the tabernae medicae in Rome. The article tries to describe the evolution of social welfare assistance from the Roman Valitudinaria to the monastic xenodochia and the first forms of Religious Hospitals.

[A brief history of the several missionary hospitals in the modern Anhui province].

In the modern Anhui province, the west missionary established clinics and hospitals to 74 in Anhui. There were four hospitals in those had been longer time and larger scale and more entirely manage system. It was larger influence for the formation and development of the modern Anhui western medicine. In the courses, the missionary - doctors promoted the spreading of the west medicine in the modern Anhui, but large quantities of Chinese doctors and nurses made with the activity contributes for these.