MODERN IRISH MISSIONARIES OF THE SPIRIT 
public institutions for the care of the ailing poor 
in a great republic the foundation of whose govern- 
ment had been the declaration that all men have “a 
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 
Asylum conditions, that is the treatment of the in- 
sane at Blockley, were so bad as to have been char- 
acterized by an investigation committee as revealing 
“shocking abuses.” Yellow fever used to come into 
the hospital occasionally because it was particularly 
rife in Philadelphia, so much so that there was at 
one time a serious question of abandoning Philadel- 
phia as the site for a city because of the number of 
cases of malaria and yellow fever that occurred 
there. Owing to the frequency of the epidemics of 
various fatal diseases, it was “impossible to procure 
suitable nurses; only the most depraved creatures 
could be hired; . . . an abandoned profligate set 
of nurses and attendants,” who, “rioted on the pro- 
visions and comforts left for the sick.” As Miss 
Nutting and Miss Dock say, “All the work of the 
house, nursing included, was supposed to be done 
by the inmates and there are no reasons to believe 
that it was of higher grade than that at Bellevue.” 
They add that “It was also the custom of that in- 
human institutionalism to permit the lowest and the 
coarsest of the public rabble to visit the wards for 
the insane, to laugh, stare and jeer at them as if 
they had been wild beasts in cages.” This had long 
been the custom at Bedlam, the great insane asylum 
at London, England, and visitors used to be charged 
a penny for the privilege of enjoying entertainment 
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