452 



NURSES, TRAINED. 



and manufacturing industries of the province, giv- 

 ing employment to many thousands of people en- 

 gaged in these pursuits, and thus creating an active 

 and steady home market and good prices for the 

 products of the farm, our farmers have much to 

 stimulate and encourage them in their work. 

 Your committee are of the opinion that the annual 

 provincial exhibitions at Halifax have had a 

 marked effect in the improvement of the live stock 

 of the province. 



" Your committee beg to commend the action 

 of the Government and congratulate the country 

 \ipon the very liberal grant submitted in the esti- 

 mates for the* importation of standard-breed stock. 



" Among the factors which have brought about 

 the present hopeful agricultural outlook in the 

 province must be noticed the Nova Scotia Farmers' 

 Association. This fine organization by its annual 

 meetings is the means of diffusing a vast amount 

 of information of the utmost value to the tillers 

 of the soil. The Fruit Growers' Association is a 

 kindred organization, whose services to the horti- 

 cultural interests of the province can not be over- 

 estimated." 



Fruit Growing. The province is famous for 

 its apples, and Annapolis valley is the center of 

 one of the finest fruit-growing regions in the 

 world. Late in January, 1900, and in connection 

 with the general position of this industry, Presi- 

 dent J. W. Bigelow, of the Nova Scotia Fruit 

 Growers' Association, said, in his annual address: 



" The past two years have been most profitable 

 to the Nova Scotia fruit grower from the fact that 

 we have had fair crops of superior apples and 

 obtained the highest prices in the history of the 

 trade, owing to a scarcity in the world's apple crop. 

 This year our apple crop will exceed 400,000 bar- 

 rels, and as most of these have been sold at $2 

 to $3 a barrel, the net proceeds may be fairly 

 estimated at over $1,000,000. Some estimate may 

 be formed of the immense profit of this business 

 this year from the fact that several growers have 

 accepted or refused from $3,000 to $5,000 for this 

 year's crop of apples, and many orchards have 

 paid this year 25 per cent, on a valuation of $1,000 

 an acre. This is owing to the fact that Nova 

 Scotia was the only apple-producing country that 

 had 90 per cent, of an average crop. Our plum 

 crop has this year yielded about 60,000 baskets 

 ( 10 pounds), with average sales of 30 cents a 

 basket. Our cranberry crop reached over 1,000 

 barrels. Pears and small fruit were a fair crop, 

 and sold at remunerative prices. Strawberries, 

 about 300,000 baskets. Our fruit trees this year 

 have been unusually free from insect pests and 

 fungous diseases, and the dreaded San Jose scale 

 is so far not known to exist in Nova Scotia." 



NURSES, TRAINED. The need for trained 

 nurses appears to have agitated many countries at 

 about the same time, and everywhere the move- 

 ment to provide them grew out of a desire to im- 

 prove upon and organize under more definite train- 

 ing the work attempted for ages by sisters of pro- 

 fessed religious orders in the hospitals and on the 

 battlefields of Europe. If England appears to get 

 most credit for pushing the system, it is because 

 Kngland more than any other country stood in 

 need of it, having had no generally recognized 

 sisterhoods until of late years. 



To Kaiserswerth, a little village on the Rhine, 

 is traced the germ of the nursing system which 

 now prevails throughout America, the British 

 Islands and their dependencies. The Deaconesses' 

 Institute, at Kaiserswerth, was founded by Pastor 

 Kliedner and his wife in 1836. It grew out of 

 an asylum school and penitentiary beside a hos- 

 pital, but from the skill of its founders its sys- 



tem was soon heard from, and it still enjoys a 

 world-wide fame. To this institute went Florence 

 Nightingale for training in 1851. The following 

 year she undertook the task of superintendent for 

 invalid ladies in Harley Street, London, and soon 

 afterward published her Notes on Hospitals, which 

 attracted wide attention and aroused interest in 

 Government circles. In 1854 the Crimean War 

 broke out, and Miss Nightingale and her staff of 

 trained nurses went to the front, and her fame 

 soon spread over the world. 



But before that several efforts had been made 

 by private individuals to train nurses in England. 

 In 1840 Mrs. Fry and Lady Inglis founded the 

 first nursing institute in London, under the patron- 

 age of Queen Adelaide and at the suggestion of 

 Dr. Gouch and Robert Southey. This institution 

 still exists in Devonshire Square. Up to this 

 period nurses had had the reputation of being 

 the most unreliable class of working women 

 known. An English physician of this period 

 wrote : " We always engage them without a char- 

 acter, as no respectable person would undertake 

 so disagreeable an office." Burdett, in his History 

 of Hospitals and Nursing, says: "Every vice was 

 rampant among them, and their aid to the dying 

 was to remove pillows and bedclothes, and so 

 hasten the end." 



in 1847 Sir Edward Parry sent out a call for 

 nurses for the Harbor Naval Hospital, London. 

 They were to be trained without expense to them- 

 selves at Dalston, and finished, if possible, at the 

 institute at Kaiserswerth. Not one volunteer re- 

 sponded to this appeal. Florence Nightingale had 

 not yet become a heroine and made nursing, fash- 

 ionable. Next the Bishop of London founded a 

 collegiate institute for the training of nurses, but 

 the training proved inadequate. Mrs. Sellers also 

 founded, the same year, the first Anglican sister- 

 hood of the Holy Trinity, at Davenport, whose 

 inmates had to undergo two years' training as 

 nurses, and this school grew. It still required tin- 

 name t)f religion and consecrated devotion to make 

 nursing respectable in the popular mind. Several 

 other nurses' schools followed this, among them 

 that of St. John the Baptist and St. Margaret's. 



In 1856 the sum of 40,000 was subscribed for 

 Miss Nightingale by a grateful public, and she at 

 once expressed her desire to found with this a 

 training school for nurses. In 1860 the Nightin- 

 gale Fund School was opened in connection with 

 St. Thomas's Hospital, London, and it has long 

 enjoyed the reputation of being the best in the 

 world. At most hospitals the longest term for 

 training nurses is two years; at St. Thomas's it 

 is three years. It was really founded for gentle- 

 women to qualify for head places in hospitals or 

 for district nursing under an organized system. 

 The rule in nearly all training schools is, 1h.it 

 the services rendered by the probationer or pupil 

 pays for the tuition, besides which the hospital 

 makes a small periodical allowance for the e\ 

 penses of costumes, text-books, etc. At St. Thom- 

 as's the pupil pays 30 for tuition, and mu-t 

 agree to take service for two years after leaving 

 the school. There are occasional vacancies tor the 

 accommodation of those who can not afford 1<> pay. 

 The home adjoins the hospital quarters, and oin 

 of the terms of training is that the nurses need not 

 lease Great Britain unless at their own request. 

 St. Thomas's, however, has sent abroad some 

 famous nurses who wished to go. 



Schools for training have since multiplied in 

 London, and no great hospital, public or private. 

 is without one. There arc good training school* 

 in other English cities, and also in Scotland 

 and Ireland. That of the Royal Infirmary, at 



