"Saladin desiring to prove for himself this reputed indulgence of the knights to their patients, disguised himself as a pilgrim and was received among the sick in the hospital in Jerusalem. He refused all food, declaring that there was only one thing that he fancied, and that he knew they would not give him. On being pressed, he confessed that it was one of the feet of the horse of the Grand Master. The latter, on being acquainted with this fact, ordered that the noble animal should be killed and the sick stranger's desire satisfied. Saladin at this point, thinking the experiment had gone far enough, declared himself taken with a repugnance to it, so the animal was spared." Virchow studied very faithfully the management of these medieval hospitals, and was evidently quite impressed with the success with which difficulties had been {262} met and overcome. None knew better than he all the difficulties there were in hospital management, for during nearly fifty years he had been identified with many hospitals, from city charity institutions to the various kinds needed for war and those erected in connection with universities for teaching purposes. He had very little patience with religious formulas, and was indeed a typical agnostic. Notwithstanding this, he has been perfectly frank in confessing how much is accomplished by the religious management of the hospitals, and even did not hesitate to declare that if hospitals for the poor particularly, are to be successfully managed, there must be a change in the view-point of those who take up the work of hospital nursing, and the attendants must come from better social classes than is at present the custom. (This is of course for Germany.) The question as to whether secular or religious management of hospitals shall prevail has not been as yet absolutely decided, and this adds to the value of Virchow's opinion. No one knew better than he of the many sacrifices required if the patients are to be properly cared for. Himself, as I have said, utterly without religion, it is curious to see how he recognizes the benefit that religious motives confer upon the management of a hospital, and how much better the work is likely to be done by those who give themselves up to the care of the sick as a Christian duty. He says: "The general hospital is the real purpose of our time, and anyone who takes up service in it must give himself up to it from the purest of humanitarian motives. The hospital attendant must, at least morally and spiritually, see in the patient only the helpless and suffering man, his brother and his neighbor; and in order to be able to {263} do this he must have a warm heart, an earnest devotion, and a true sense of duty. There is in reality scarcely any human occupation that brings so immediately with it its own reward, or in which the feeling of personal contentment comes from thorough accomplishment of purpose.