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Buildings: Hospital

The Charterhouse, originally a monastery of the Carthusians, is a corruption of La Chartreuse, the name of the district in France where this religious Order first came into existence. Christ's Hospital, also known as the Blue Coat School, from the colour of the coats worn by the boys, retains the ancient designation of a church and school belonging to the Grey Friars. It is only in modern times, by the way, that the term Hospital has come to be exclusively applied in this country to a refuge for the London Churches and Buildings. sick. Properly understood, a hospital denotes a house intended for the reception and accommodation of travellers; the source of the word being the Latin hospitalis, pertaining to a guest, based upon hospes, a stranger, a guest, and from which we derive the word HOSPITALITY. The great Bernardine monastery on the summit of the Alps, devoted to the good work of rescuing snow-bound travellers, is appropriately denominated a Hospice, which answers to our Hospital. St. Bartholomew's Hospital was founded by Rahare, a monk attached to the neighbouring Priory of St. Bartholomew in 1123; whereas Guy's Hospital arose out of the bequest of £238,292, by the will of Thomas Guy, a benevolent bookseller of Lombard Street, who died in 1722.