The Brooklyn Medical Journal. Vol. II. No. 2. Aug., 1888

by Various

Ladies and Gentlemen and Class of 1888: We are apt to claim the trained female nurse as the outcome of the more rational treatment of disease, in modern times, but this is wide of the truth. So far as I can ascertain, in my researches among the ancient Vidas of Hindostan, and the literature of Egypt, Greece and Rome, I find no allusion to female nurses as a class, until the third century of the Christian era. Surgery and medicine had attained a high degree of perfection, many operations which to-day we claim as new to the nineteenth century were successfully performed 4,000 years ago; but the special nursing of them seems to have been done by the medical student, or by the practitioner himself. The earliest record I can find of women devoting themselves to the care of the sick, and attending to all the duties of a trained nurse, is that of Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. This noble woman, who lived nearly fifteen hundred years ago, not only founded a hospital and endowed it, but herself, with the ladies of her court, there gave the most devoted and tender care to the sick poor. The Emperor Valens presented the most beautiful grounds and buildings in the neighborhood of Cæsarea to Archbishop Basil, “for the benefit of the poor whose bodies were afflicted with disease,” as being those who stood most in need of assistance. And as early as A. D. 373, the Archbishop had organized at Cæsarea an immense hospital, called the “Basilides,” which Gregory Nazienza thought worthy to be recorded among the wonders of the world; so numerous were the poor and sick who came thither, and so admirable was the care and order in which they were served. The charge of these sufferers was not at first assigned to humble hands; the most illustrious ladies of the empire participating in the offices of mercy.

At Constantinople the Empress Flacilla, wife of the elder Theodosius, in the year 380 was watching with solicitude over all those whose bodies were mutilated, or who had lost limbs. She visited them in their own dwellings, waited upon them herself, and supplied their wants. She repaired with the same zeal to the public hospitals of the church, where she attended the sick, made ready their culinary utensils, tasted their broth, carried the dish to them, broke the bread, divided the meal, washed the cups, and performed for them all the offices which usually devolve upon servants. One might justly be proud to be in such royal company, and regard, as she did, nothing degrading which is necessary to be done for a sick patient.

In modern times, the revival of nursing by trained women is due in great measure to that noble and accomplished woman, Florence Nightingale. As early as 1844, at the age of twenty-one years, she began to exhibit her interest in and the alleviation of suffering, and the improvement of the care of the sick poor in the hospitals of Great Britain. She visited and inspected the hospitals of Europe, and in 1851 entered into training as a nurse, in the institution of Protestant Deaconesses, at Kaiserworth on the Rhine. On her return to London she put into thorough order the Sanitarium for Governesses, in connection with the London Institute. She served ten years of apprenticeship before entering on her life work.

In the spring of 1854 war was declared with Russia, and an army of 25,000 men was despatched to the Crimea. The faulty arrangements of the British government for the care of the sick and wounded furnished the theatre in which Florence Nightingale was to win her first laurels. The hospitals were soon crowded, and the mortality in the wards so great that the casualties of the fiercest battles were as nothing in comparison.

The war office recognizing the condition of affairs, gladly accepted the offer of Miss Nightingale to go to the seat of war and organize a nursing department.

Her devotion to the sufferers can never be forgotten, she has stood twenty hours at a time, directing and assisting in the care of the sick and wounded. Her unfaltering devotion and incessant work undermined her health; but though sick and feeble, she never left the field of duty until Turkey was evacuated by the English troops. Major Delafield (who with Maj. Mordecai and Capt. Geo. B. McClellan, U. S. A., had been sent to Europe by our government, to study the art of war in the Crimea), in his report to the War Department, remarks, in speaking of the English hospital at Scutari, “It was in this well-arranged hospital that that most estimable lady, Miss Nightingale, exercised her powerful influence in alleviating the condition of the sick and wounded from the battle-field. Women as nurses were employed to attend upon the men in the wards, under the kind and beneficent guardianship of this good lady, with the many advantages that would naturally follow the most gentle, painstaking, and cleanly attendance of women as nurses. Miss Nightingale’s efforts have resulted in the establishing, in connection with the English army, an office known as the ‘Superintendant General of Army Nurses,’ the office to be always filled by a woman. She has under her a corps of female nurses, who take care of the sick in the military hospitals.” The Sanitary and Christian Commission of our late war was the outcome of the volunteer nursing in the English war of the Crimea and the fruit of these efforts in this country are the training schools for nurses which have sprung up all over this land.

Next to our entrance into this world and our departure from it, occasions such as the present, when we have completed our education and are about to enter upon our chosen vocation, are the most important events in our lives. The calling which you have chosen, while not a new one, is comparatively new in having special schools, and courses of study provided for it. Nursing has always been considered peculiarly woman’s work—more or less adaptation to such work is inborn in woman. What man can smoothe the pillow of the sick, or soothe an aching brow as gently and acceptably as one of the gentler sex! Who can move as quietly, and approach the bed of pain so gently as woman!

I have seen sick men, absent from home and friends, sigh for a mother, sister, or wife who is not at hand.

Thanks to this school, and others, everyone can now have skilled female care when sickness and disease are upon them.

You who are about to go out from us to-day, are entering upon a calling which will require all the skill, faithfulness, courage, patience, forbearance, endurance, watchfulness, self-possession, tenderness, cheerfulness and tact, that a human being can possess, and above all, “a conscience void of offence toward God and man.” “To thine own self be true, and it doth follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any other.” You have each and all of you received, at the hands of your admirable Superintendent, and the lecturers of the College, such definite and varied information in all the departments in which you may be called to act, that you ought to be prepared for most emergencies, and have shown by your examinations that you have heard and understood them.