As throughout Virginia, hospitality is inherent in the people of Loudoun. Especially is this so at Christmas time when, from early days, the old English custom of stopping all farm work (save only necessitous care of the live stock) from Christmas Eve to the second day of January still obtains. Then scattered Loudoun folk seek to return, if but for a day, to their native soil bringing back with them friends and acquaintances that they may show their birthright; then open house prevails, time-honoured eggnogg and appletoddy greet all guests and the Leesburg Assembly, following its custom handed down through the generations, holds its eagerly awaited Christmas Ball. With an unusually healthy climate the county is fortunate in the rarely efficient and devoted corps of physicians, both general practitioners and specialists, who faithfully guard the physical condition of its people. Of their number the Virginia State Medical Society has honored itself and Loudoun by electing as its President Dr. G. F. Simpson of Purcellville. And to the marked ability of her physicians is added the Loudoun Hospital, founded in 1912, first occupying a building on Market Street, Leesburg, and later erecting and in 1917 moving into the fine modern hospital building it now occupies. "To Mr. P. Howard Lightfoot's interest and untiring efforts" wrote the hospital's historian "is due the actual bringing together of those factors and conditions which developed into the Leesburg Hospital." Now called the Loudoun County Hospital, it has a large nurses' home, beautiful grounds, fruitful gardens and withal has so splendidly grasped its opportunities for service that it has become essential to the county's welfare. To the physicians of the county, many very generous contributors and to the selfless and untiring work of Loudoun's women may all this great success be ascribed. To add to this full measure, Mrs. Eustis supports in memory of her mother Mrs. Morton, a visiting nursing service in and around Leesburg through which the kindly professional care of a registered nurse (now Mrs. Louise King) is at all times at the disposal of the people for cases of an emergency nature or those not needing continuous attention, entirely without cost to the patient, irrespective of the desire and ability of its beneficiaries to pay therefor.[190] [190] For a history of the hospital see article by Mrs. Arthur M. Chichester in _The Northern Virginian_, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 25. In this all too brief summary of her present day institutions at least a word should be said of the county's banks. The Peoples National Bank, the Loudoun National Bank, both in Leesburg; the Middleburg National Bank, the Purcellville National Bank, the Hamilton National Bank and the Round Hill National Bank, each in its community, serves the local interest and all unite in this enviable record: that not one bank in the County failed during the great financial depression of recent and unhappy memory.