NURSING 



5804 



NURSING : IN PEACE AND WAR 



Mrs. Bedford Fenwick, Editor, Britisb Journal of Nursing 



With this may be read the articles Ambulance ; Hospitals ; and Red 

 Cross. See the biographies of Florence Nightingale, and the entries 

 on the various hospitals. See also Beguines ; Hdtel Dieu ; Mercy, 

 Sisters of 



From the earliest times the art 

 of nursing was practised with a 

 certain amount of skill and much 

 self-sacrifice and devotion. The 

 science of nursing dates from the 

 time when Florence Nightingale 

 defined the basic principles upon 

 which the superstructure of mo- 

 dern nursing has been erected. 



In addition to intuitive know- 

 ledge, accumulated knowledge as 

 to the practice of nursing was 

 handed down by primitive man. 

 The ancient Hindus believed that 

 the prevention of disease was more 

 important than its cure, and laid 

 down excellent hygienic rules. 

 Buddhism, contemporary with the 

 height of Hindu civilization, 250 

 B.C. to A.D. 750, was a religion of 

 tenderness and compassion. The 

 conquests of Mahomedanism, and 

 also the teaching of the Brah- 

 mins, were antagonistic to the 

 humane teaching of Buddha, and 

 hospitals were abolished when 

 Buddhism fell. In Ceylon and 

 Persia there are records of hos- 

 pitals from early dates, and in 

 Egypt the laws of health were well 

 defined, but the highest standard 

 of excellence in this respect was 

 undoubtedly attained by the Jews, 

 and the sanitary laws of Moses are 

 still patterns of hygienic practice. 



Hippocrates (b. 460 B.C. ) was ac- 

 quainted with and inculcated the 

 principles of good nursing, and 

 Aretaeus of Cappadocia (fl.A.t). 100) 

 gave many directions on nursing 

 points. In the classic days of 

 Greece the nursing of sick slaves 

 was one of the duties of the lady 

 of the house. In ancient Rome 

 the best care and nursing available 

 were given to the wounded sol- 

 diers, first in private houses, then 

 in tents or separate buildings, 

 where they were nursed by women 

 and old men of irreproachable cha- 

 racter. Later, in military hospitals 

 called valetudinaria, they were 

 cared for by a class of orderlies 

 called nosocomi. 



In Early Christian Times 



From the establishment of the 

 Christian era to our own day the 

 historical record is unbroken. The 

 chief well-defined orders of women 

 concerned with nursing were the 

 deaconesses, widows, and nuns. 

 The diaconate included men and 

 women, and the care of the poor 

 and sick was prominent among 

 their functions. Phoebe of Cench- 

 rea, described by S. Paul as " a 

 succourer of many, and of myself 



also," was the first deaconess, and 

 members of the order subse- 

 quently spread through Asia Minor, 

 Syria, Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Ire- 

 land. They laid the foundation of 

 the nurse's calling and of modern 

 works of charity. 



The Ordo Viduarum, the eccle- 

 siastical widows, was a small com- 

 munity of great dignity, later 

 merged in the monastriae or nuns. 

 The ecclesiastical widows took a 

 very active part in the development 

 of hospitals. The ecclesiastical vir- 

 gins did not at first live in com- 

 munity, and they were consecrated, 

 not ordained like the deaconesses. 

 1-a.ter the order of deaconesses 

 practically died out, and the vir- 

 gins and widows were merged in 

 the nun. Nursing by religious 

 orders dates back to the 5th century 

 when S. Brigid of Kildare and her 

 nuns attended the sick. 



Military Nursing Orders 



The military nursing orders arose 

 at the time of the Crusades, pro- 

 minent among them the Knighlg 

 Hospitallers of S. John of Jeru- 

 salem, of Rhodes, and of Malta. 

 The Knights Hospitallers were at 

 first a purely nursing order. The 

 Teutonic Knights had both mili- 

 tary and nursing duties, and the 

 Knights of S. Lazarus served .in 

 the leper hospices, dedicated to S. 

 Lazarus and called lazarettos, 

 one of which was in existence in 

 Jerusalem at the time of the first 

 crusade. Other names associated 

 with the care of the sick are those 

 of S. Francis of Assisi, S. Clare, 

 S. Elizabeth of Hungary, and S. 

 Catherine of Siena. 



The 12th and 13th centuries 

 also saw the rise of a number of 

 secular orders. The most interest- 

 ing of these were the Beguines of 

 Flanders. The members of the 

 Sisterhood of the Common Life 

 were also pre-eminent as visiting 

 nurses, and the order of San 

 Spirito was a nursing order of great 

 distinction, with headquarters at 

 Montpellier. The Hotel Dieu in 

 Lyons, founded in 542, and later 

 that in Paris, the most celebrated 

 hospitals in France, were nursed 

 by women voluntarily called to 

 serve the sick poor. Later medie- 

 val nursing orders were the Grey 

 Sisters, founded in the 13th cen- 

 tury, the Brothers of Mercy or 

 Pity, and the Camellines, who 

 nursed the plague-stricken in an 

 epidemic in Barcelona so devotedly 

 that the order became extinct. 



NURSING 



Among English hospitals men- 

 tion must be made of the hospital 

 of S. Katherine, founded by Queen 

 Matilda, the patronage of which 

 has always been in the hands of 

 the queens of England. In 1348 

 this hospital received a royal 

 charter from Philippa, queen of 

 Edward III, at which time there 

 was added to the scope of the work 

 of the noble ladies who served it, 

 the visiting and nursing of the sick 

 in their own homes. 



With the dissolution of the re- 

 ligious houses by Henry VIII, and 

 the expulsion of the religious 

 nursing sisters from the hospitals, 

 lay nurses of the servant class 

 were introduced. From the later 

 part of the 17th century to the 

 middle of the 19th was the 

 darkest period of nursing history, 

 not only in Great Britain but 

 abroad. The well-known characters 

 of Sarah Gamp and Betsey Prig, 

 drawn by Charles Dickens in Mar- 

 tin Chuzzlewit, are true pictures 

 of the nurse of the period. 



The marriage of Friederika 

 Munster to Theodor Fliedner, 

 pastor of Kaiserswerth-on-the- 

 Rhine, in the third decade of the 

 19th century, was an influential 

 event in the nursing of the sick. 

 She at once started a society for 

 nursing and visiting in the homes 

 of the poor, and organized a hos- 

 pital which was the foundation of 

 the deaconesses' institutes which 

 have spread from Kaiserswerth 

 over the world. From here Eliza- 

 beth Fry, Florence Nightingale, 

 and others carried ideas and 

 methods into Great Britain. 

 Institution of Nursing Sisters 



In 1840, through Mrs. Fry's 

 influence, the institution of nursing 

 sisters in Devonshire Square, 

 London, was founded with the 

 object of preparing selected candi- 

 dates for nursing in private houses, 

 and still carries on in S. Kensing- 

 ton. In 1848 S. John's House was 

 founded, the design being " to 

 establish a corporate or collegiate 

 institution, the objects of which 

 would be to maintain, in a com- 

 munity, women who are members 

 of the Church of England, who 

 should receive such instruction 

 and undergo such training as might 

 best fit them to act as nurses and 

 visitors to the sick and poor." It 

 was first located in Fitzroy Square, 

 and had an independent existence 

 until 1919, when the council 

 arranged with the authorities of 

 S. Thomas's Hospital to take it 

 over as a private nursing institu- 

 tion attached to that hospital. 



Miss Nightingale's life-work was 

 in connexion with the Nightingale 

 Training School for Nurses at S. 

 Thomas's Hospital, which she 



