the signature upon it, it is evident that he had a son who survived him thirty-six years and whose monogram we find upon this portrait. The frame of it has also the royal coat of arms debruised, the batons of a marshal of France, the collar of the Golden Fleece and the ducal coronet. (G. C. W.)
HOSMER, HARRIET GOODHUE (1830–1908), American
sculptor, was born at Watertown, Massachussetts, on the 9th
of October 1830. She early showed marked aptitude for modelling,
and studied anatomy with her father, a physician, and
afterwards at the St Louis Medical College. She then studied
in Boston until 1852, when, with her friend Charlotte Cushman,
she went to Rome, where from 1853 to 1860 she was the pupil of
the English sculptor John Gibson. She lived in Rome until a few
years before her death. There she was associated with Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Thorwaldsen, Flaxman, Thackeray, George Eliot and
George Sand; and she was frequently the guest of the Brownings
at Casa Guidi, in Florence. Among her works are “Daphne”
and “Medusa,” ideal heads (1853); “Puck” (1855), a spirited
and graceful conception which she copied for the prince of
Wales, the duke of Hamilton and others; “Oenone” (1855),
her first life-sized figure, now in the St Louis Museum of Fine
Arts; “Beatrice Cenci” (1857), for the Mercantile Library
of St Louis; “Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in Chains” (1859),
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; “A
Sleeping Faun” (1867); “A Waking Faun”; a bronze statue
of Thomas H. Benton (1868) for Lafayette Park, St Louis;
bronze gates for the earl of Brownlow’s art gallery at Ashridge
Hall; a Siren fountain for Lady Marian Alford; a fountain for
Central Park, New York City; a monument to Abraham
Lincoln; and, for the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893,
statues of the queen of Naples as the “heroine of Gaëta,” and
of Queen Isabella of Spain. Miss Hosmer died at Watertown,
Mass., on the 21st of February 1908.
HOSPICE (Lat. hospitium, entertainment, hospitality, inn,
hospes, host), the name usually given to the homes of rest and
refuge kept by religious houses for pilgrims and guests. The
most famous hospices are those of the Great and Little St
Bernard Passes in the Alps.
HOSPITAL (Lat. hospitalis, the adjective of hospes, host or
guest), a term now in general use for institutions in which
medical treatment is given to the sick or injured. The place
where a guest was received, was in Lat. hospitium (Fr. hospice),
but the terms hospitalis (sc. domus), hospitale (sc. cubiculum) and
hospitalia (sc. cubicula) came into use in the same sense. Hence
were derived on the one hand the Fr. hospital, hôpital, applied
to establishments for temporary occupation by the sick for the
purpose of medical treatment, and hospice to places for permanent
occupation by the poor, infirm, incurable or insane; on the
other, the form hôtel, which became restricted (except in the
ease of hôtel-Dieu) to private or public dwelling-houses for
ordinary occupation. In English, while “hostel” retained the
earlier sense and “hotel” has become confined to that of a
superior inn (q.v.), “hospital” was used both in the sense of a
permanent retreat for the poor infirm or for the insane, and also
for a regular institution for the temporary reception of sick
cases; but modern usage has gradually restricted it mainly to
the latter, other words, such as almshouse and asylum, being
preferred in the former cases.
The Origin of Hospitals.—In spite of contrary opinions the germ of the hospital system may be seen in pre-Christian times (see Charity and Charities). Pinel goes so far as to declare that there were asylums distinctly set apart for the insane in the temples of Saturn in ancient Egypt. But this is probably an exaggeration, the real historical facts pointing to the existence of medical schools in connexion with the temples generally, to the knowledge that the priests possessed what medical science existed, and finally to the rite of “Incubation,” which involved the visit of sick persons to the temple, in the shade of which they slept, that the god might inform them by dreams of the treatment they ought to follow. The temples of Saturn are known to have existed some 4000 years before Christ; and that those temples were medical schools in their earliest form is beyond question. The reason why no records of these temples have survived is due to the fact that they were destroyed in a religious revolution which swept away the very name of Saturn from the monuments in the country. Professor Georg Ebers of Leipzig, whose possession of that important handbook of Egyptian medicine called the Papyrus Ebers constitutes him an authority, says the Heliopolis certainly had a clinic united to the temple. The temples of Dendera, Thebes and Memphis, are other examples. Those early medical works, the Books of Hermes, were preserved in the shrines. Patients coming to them paid contributions to the priests. The most famous temples in Greece for the cure of disease were those of Aesculapius at Cos and Trikka, while others at Rhodes, Cnidus, Pergamum and Epidaurus were less known but frequented. Thus it is clear that both in Egypt and in Greece the custom of laying the sick in the precincts of the temples was a national practice.
Alexandria again was a famous medical centre. Before describing the European growth of the hospital system in modern times, to which its development in the Roman Empire is the natural introduction, it will be well to dispose very briefly of the facts relating to the hospital system in the East. Harun al-Rashid (A.D. 763–809) attached a college to every mosque, and to that again a hospital. He placed at Bagdad an asylum for the insane open to all believers; and there was a large number of public infirmaries for the sick without payment in that city. Benjamin, the Jewish traveller, notes an efficient scheme for the reception of the sick in A.D. 1173, which had long been in existence. The Buddhists no less than the Mahommedans had their hospitals, and as early as 260 B.C. the emperor Asoka founded the many hospitals of which Hindustan could then boast. The one at Surat, made famous by travellers, and considered to have been built under the emperor’s second edict, is still in existence. These hospitals contained provision so extensive as to be quite comparable to modern institutions. In China the only records that remain are those of books of very early date dealing with the theory of medicine. To return to India, the hospitals of Asoka were swept away by a revival of Brahmanism, and a practical hiatus exists between the hospitals he introduced and those that were refounded by the British ascendancy. Hadrian’s reign contains the first notice of a military hospital in Rome. At the beginning of the Christian era we hear of the existence of open surgeries (of various price and reputation), the specialization of the medical profession, and the presence of women practitioners, often as obstetricians. Iatria, or tabernae-medicae, are described by Galen and Placetus: many towns built them at their own cost. These iatria attended almost entirely to out-patients, and the system of medicine fostered by them continued without much development down to the middle of the 18th century. It is to be noted that these out-patients paid reasonable fees. In Christian days no establishments were founded for the relief of the sick till the time of Constantine. A law of Justinian referring to various institutions connected with the church mentions among them the Nosocomia, which correspond to our idea of hospitals. In A.D. 370 Basil had one built for lepers at Caesarea. St Chrysostom founded a hospital at Constantinople. At Alexandria an order of 600 Parabolani attended to the sick, being chosen for the purpose for their experience by the prelate of the city (A.D. 416). Fabiola, a rich Roman lady, founded the first hospital at Rome possessed of a convalescent home in the country. She even became a nurse herself. St Augustine founded one at his see of Hippo. These Nosocomia fell indeed almost entirely into the hands of the church, which supported them by its revenues when necessary and controlled their administration. Salerno became famous as a school of medicine; its rosiest days were between A.D. 1000 and 1050. Frederick II. prescribed the course for students there, and founded a rival school at Naples. At this period the connexion between monasteries and hospitals becomes a marked one. The crusaders also created another bond between the church and hospital development, as the route they traversed was marked by such foundations. Lepers were some of the earliest patients for whom a specialized treatment was recognized,
