Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1917 — Germ of Red Cross Idea. [ARTICLE]

Germ of Red Cross Idea.

The germ of the Red Cross idea seems to date back into the sixteenth century, when a gay young Neapolitan soldier saw the error of his ways, became a priest, and devoting himself to relieving the plague-stricken, organized the “Fathers of the Good Death,” whose members were pledged, to the same service and who wore on their breasts a red cross in memory of the sufferings of Christ. This was Camillus de Lellis, who fell a victim to the disease he combated, aind who, canonized by Benedict XIV, in 1746, became St. Camillus in the Catholic calendar of saints.