As the health care ministries of the Confraternities of Charity, Ladies of Charity, and the Daughters of Charity emerged in 17th century France both in terms of home and hospital nursing care for the poor-sick they can be described as “state-of-the-art.” The role of the physician in diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medicines and courses of treatment for nurses to follow were highlighted by Saint Vincent who said:
You should also, Sisters, show great respect for the orders given you by physicians for the treatment of your patients, and take care not to omit even one of them for the times as well as the dosages of the of the medicines…Carefully observe the way the physicians treat the sick in the towns…so that when you go into the villages, you can make use of this knowledge….All that is very necessary, and you’d do much good when you’ve been trained in everything.
According to Saint Vincent, Saint Louise de Marillac personally formed sisters to “serve and nurse the sick poor, and to prepare and administer medicines.” Throughout the corpus of Vincentian primitive texts the discussion of health care practices including discussions of courses of treatment and the preparation of medicines is quite detailed.
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During this period the most popular medical manual was Le Medecin Charitable by Philbert Guybert (1579?-1633). This work went through almost sixty editions in less than fifty years. This was a somewhat polemical work that countered the contemporary attempts by pharmacists to gain control over the production of medicines. Guybert’s volume provided detailed information for the home production of all but the most complicated of medicines.
Certainly, this volume was a key resource in delivering 17th century Vincentian health care. It was one of the few books mandated to be in the libraries of houses of the Daughters of Charity in this period.
Philbert Guybert, Les œuvres charitable de Philbert Guybert, escuyer, docteur regent en la faculté de medicine à Paris: sçavoir, Le medecine charitable; Le prix et valeur des medicamens; L’apothicaire charitable; La maniere d’embaumer les corps morts et Les tromperies du bezoard descouvertes. A Paris: Chez Jean Jose, 1629. SpC. 615.5086942 G987o1629
