“It will be remembered that in the year 1793, the yellow fever made an awful and depopulating visitation to our city, and those who were spared its ravages were left in much distress. Anne Parish, and some other young women, having devoted considerable time and strength in relieving the sufferers, felt called upon to continue their labors when the deadly scourge had passed, as the following minutes, the first on the books, will show:
“‘A number of young women, having been induced to believe from observations they have made that they could afford some assistance to their suffering fellow-creatures, particularly widows and orphans, by entering into a subscription for their relief, visiting them in their solitary dwellings without distinction of nation or color, sympathizing in their afflictions, and, as far as their ability extends, alleviating them, have for this purpose associated together. Their views being humble and funds inconsiderable, yet seeking neither honor nor applause, they only ask a blessing on their feeble efforts, sensible of the obligations they are under to an Almighty Giver for the comforts they enjoy, are desirous of making a grateful acknowledgment by endeavoring to adopt the precept He taught, to visit the sick, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. They propose to nominate a treasurer, to appoint a committee to visit the poor, and discover their necessities either for immediate relief, or to give them employment.’”
This was in 1795, and it was this same young Quaker woman, Anne Parish, who, in that, or the following year, believing that “ignorance was one great cause of vice and the calamities attendant thereon, and that a guarded education would tend greatly to the future usefulness and respectability of the rising youth,” with two friends, opened the first charity school for girls in the United States, teaching them “some of the most useful branches of learning, viz.: spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, and sewing.”
These two little societies, both founded by one young woman, were the pioneers in the work for the desolate and oppressed now being carried on by hundreds of associations and by thousands of women all over our country, and we can only thank God that so many are seeking “to comfort and help the weak-hearted, to raise up those who fall, and to strengthen such as do stand.”
XIII.
CARE OF THE SICK.
HOSPITALS AND TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR NURSES MANAGED WHOLLY OR IN PART BY WOMEN.
BY
EDNAH DOW CHENEY.
So soon as the human being emerged from barbarism, and life became precious, the restoration of the sick to health must have engaged attention. The original idea of the hospital was wholly charitable, as it was an obvious duty to take care of the sick, who were unable to help themselves, and under many circumstances this work could be better done in an establishment for that special purpose than in a private home.
Such establishments have existed in very early times and in various countries, and women have always borne their part in the work as nurses, if not as physicians or managers.
Although the hospital, in some form, was not unknown before the establishment of the Christian church, yet that church certainly took the care of the sick as a special province, and found in its orders of monks and nuns very convenient instruments for carrying it on. It was an important adjunct of religion, for the mind and heart, during sickness and convalescence, are open to religious and moral influences, and the grateful patient often became a zealous convert to the church which had given him help in the hour of suffering. The old proverb recognized this: