Care by loving-hearted people of those in need is as old as humanity. Divine Love ever demands—and impels—this service. What divine Love impels, it also directs, sustains, and blesses. Divine Love animates the prayer in the perceptive thought "How can I help?" and answers it. This Love has made men their brothers' keepers. Having instilled the quality of mercy in human consciousness, Love blesses those who practice it.
Caring for the ill, wounded, and infirm was early considered a Christian duty. Later, orders of nuns and monks dedicated their lives to this work.
After the Protestant Reformation these orders tended to decline. Though new orders were founded, including, in Germany, a pioneer order of Protestant nurses, the next two and a half centuries were a dark period in the history of nursing. Too many of the sick were left to people like the Sairey Gamp of Dickens—to the ignorant, the dishonest, the dissolute, the careless, and the callous.
