78 A Short History of Nursing acter, and carrying on the nursing in a great num- ber of city hospitals, especially in Switzerland and in Germany, where at one time they had more than one hundred and fifty hospitals in their care. It is quite possible that this nursing order of men may have contributed largely to the revival of medicine in the twelfth century, or at least may ha.ve strengthened it, for men engaged in nursing incline naturally toward medicine and often pass on into the ranks of medical men. Toward the end of the thirteenth century a papal edict made all the houses of the order subject to the one in Rome. This was the first step toward altering the free form of the brotherhood. Within the next two centuries it became strictly monastic and died out. Orders of secular Sisters originally called oblates, founded in Florence in 1296, have nursed in excellent work, and for the unusually broad pro- fessional instruction allowed to them, as compared with that of many other Italian nursing orders. The history of these important free nursing orders of the Middle Ages suggests a positive in- compatibility between the needs of a nursing service and an artificial limitation of the nurse's The oblates of Florence the chief Florentine hospitals from that day to the present time. They have always been distinguished for their
