780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



out by those who had an interest in exaggerating its dangers had 

 to give up half his property before being permitted to bury him- 

 self for life in the out-of-town places provided by the Church. The 

 omnivorous taste and good digestion of the Church have become pro- 

 verbial. 



The majority of the clerical associations having failed, the seven- 

 teenth and still more the eighteenth centuries were far behind former 

 periods in regard to systematic nursing. It has taken a long time be- 

 tween the church institutions, which no longer came up to the inten- 

 tions of their founders, and the spontaneous efforts of free men and 

 women who felt the necessity of appropriate efforts on a different 

 basis. The history of this slow evolution is very interesting ; it is the 

 co-ordinate of the history of a healthy and wholesome individualism 

 in general, after long indifference and chaos. 



Schools for training nurses were established in Germany fifty years 

 ago ; in Berlin by Dieffenbach, Kluge, and Gedike, and in Gottin- 

 gen by Ruhstaat. Books to serve the purpose of instructing nurses and 

 the public in general have been written by numerous men and women, 

 some of them, particularly in our days, by celebrities. Gedike him- 

 self published a work, fifty years ago, which is a very readable one 

 even now. Passing by Nightingale, who has proved how to become 

 immortal without enjoying high office, or playing on cannon, or tyr- 

 annizing nations, or being borne on a throne, let me allude to but 

 a few illustrious names : Nothnagel, who wrote on the nursing of 

 those sick with nerve-diseases ; Billroth, who published a book on 

 nursing in general ; Esmarch, who taught the first aid in emergencies ; 

 and the greatest of the many great men of the century, Virchow, with 

 his many contributions to the literature of the subject, and mainly, in 

 1869, with a lecture " On the Instruction of Women in caring for the 

 Sick outside the existing Ecclesiastical Organizations." 



This instruction of women in caring for the sick, and the relation of 

 women to nursing as a profession, can be considered from two distinct 

 points of view : first, in its influence upon them ; second, in its effects 

 upon the public. 



The first consideration is a very important one. The opposition to 

 women stepping out of their sphere, which was meant to be cooking and 

 washing, knitting and darning, begging alms and taking a daily whip- 

 ping, also getting married and raising a family, has been overcome by 

 common sense and habit. Common sense ceased to understand why or 

 how every woman could or should cook and wash, knit and darn, beg 

 alms, or get whipped or married. And habits are formed and reformed 

 with such rapidity that opposition becomes changed into favor in a few 

 years. It is but little more than a dozen years since women physicians 

 were recognized by the profession ; not over half a dozen years since 

 you heard of women lawyers. The female part, and, for that matter, 

 the male part of my audience also, are soi - ry they heard so much of a 



