Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/78

62 A Short History of Nursing lies which had never engaged in trade or menial work. The Knights and Sisters of St. John wore a black habit with a white cross on it. Later the white cross was set upon a red ground. It had eight points, representing eight virtues professed by the Order. (A Red Cross was then worn by the order of Knights Templars, who were not a nursing order.) The fame of the Hospitallers of St. John became so great as the result of their excellent nursing and relief work that gifts of land and treas- ure made the order very wealthy. It built hospi- tals and founded branches in many countries, the English branch dating from the year iioo. A special merit of the order was that it received and nursed the insane, often with great intelligence and sympathy. It was the only one of the military orders that accepted insane patients. Its career was one of great usefulness and distinction until the time of the expulsion of the Christians from Palestine (end of the thirteenth century). From this date its efficiency as a nursing order gradually waned, though its wealth and fame continued to grow. From Jerusalem the central house of the order fled to Cyprus and then to the island of Rhodes, where headquarters were maintained for some two hundred years. Again driven out by the