HISTORY OF NURSING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1943, Page 4

HISTORY OF NURSING

TRACED THROUGH AGES. IN INFORMATIVE DISPLAY. Many people associate the origin of nursing with Florence Nightingale, but in fact nursing duties were performed many centuries before her period. The leading facts are brought out in the present display, in furtherance of nursing recruitment, at Messrs Hugo & Shearer’s. A brief study of the dolls, in their period costumes, shows, for instance, that Hygiea, the Goddess of Health, represented perfect health about 420 B.C. Curative agents utilised were sunlight, pure air, and drinking water, dietetic measures, massage and physical exercises. About 360 A.D. Phoebe, a cultured woman, ministered to the poor and was spoken of by St Paul for her charity. Her work is recognised .as that of the first public health nurse. Fabiola, 390 A.D., a Roman matron, built the first general public hospital where she tended the sick. Some thirteen centuries ago the religious nursing orders of St. Augustine Sisters established their hospitals which were also schools of nursing. Today in all countries of the world their service to humanity continues. One branch of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and Malta in the 11th and 12th centuries, was a nursing order, having a corresponding order for women. Both men and women were of aristocratic birth and were wealthy. They built and equipped very fine hospitals and gave good nursing care. Today this order has one hospital in Jerusalem, while the St. John Ambulance Association throughout the world also carries on its high tradition of service. About this time St. Francis of Assisi, a pleasure-loving youth, denounced a life of ease and wealth and became a nursing missionary to the lepers. He was noted for his love of fellow men and birds and animals. Elizabeth of Hungary was one of the most beloved saints and nurses of her time and a contemporary of St. Francis. In the 17th Century St. Vincent de Paul organised charity and developed a hospital social service department through sisters who received special training in nursing and social work. Durmg the Crimean War these French Sisters of Charity were giving heroic service to their soldiers before Florence Nightingale began her work. These sisters are still in many hospitals throughout the world.

Early in the 19th century Mrs Elizabeth Fry, an. English Quakeress, became deeply interested in prison reform and the improvement of social conditions which led to her becoming interested in nursing. It was through the influence of Mrs Fry’s work that Pastor Fleidner and his wife revived the deaconess movement and founded a training school at Kaiserswerth in Germany in 1836. The advent of the Crimean War in 1854 brought to the world the heroine of modern nursing in the person of Florence Nightingale, whose aptitude and courage established the first English Army Nursing Service, in the Crimea. In admiration of her work, the nation provided a large endowment with which Miss Nightingale began the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas Hospital, London. She recognised that nursing was an art and a science and must be raised to the status of a trained profession—this would give it a rightful place in association with the medical profession. From that time nursing has been kept as a profession and nursing organisations all over the world arc strong professional bodies ever watching and guiding the profession to meet and serve the demands of humanity. A wide field of interest is to be found both in the study and practice of nursing. Its history reveals many avenues open to the nurse and much has been gained by the study of the past to aid the profession in giving a wider service for the future.