io6 A Short History of Nursing the great modern revival of the Deaconess of the early church under Protestant auspices, at „ . , - Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, almost Revival of the exactly two hundred years after St. deaconess yincent de Paul had brought her back under the to the Catholic church. The mother of Fhedners Kaiserswerth deaconesses was Frie- derike Miinster, born in 1800, just twenty years be- fore Florence Nightingale, and married when very young to pastor Theodor Fliedner. He in 1822 had gone to England to beg help for his little parish and there he met Elizabeth Fry, who inspired him by her work in prisons for women. In 1833 pastor Fliedner and his wife opened a tiny refuge for dis- charged prisoners. This was the first budding of the later vast organization of Kaiserswerth and its branches. The need of care for the sick poor impelled the Fliedners to open a little hospital in 1836. Pastor Fliedner had seen Protestant deaconesses at work in Holland, and wished the Evangelical church to have the advantage of such a body of workers as the Sisters of Charity. His wife was even more certain than he just how it could be made a success, and induced a friend of her own, Gertrude Reich- ardt, daughter and sister of physicians and ex- perienced in the care of the sick, to enter as the
