India, which was done through a period of forty years, was probably her greatest work, but is least known.

She wielded a marked political influence.

She became adviser-in-general on all hospital and nursing topics for the whole United Kingdom and for other countries.

She wrote much. Her "Notes on Hospitals" is regarded a classic. Her "Notes on Nursing" is, after fifty years, a standard work.

The principles which she laid down for the training of nurses are still considered correct. They have never been improved upon.

She opposed state registration for nurses.

She worked actively up to about 1900, and after that failed in mind and body. She died in 1910 at the age of ninety.

Her greatness was due to her remarkable combination of qualities. She had intense and loving sympathy with suffering, but her emotion was always displayed in action of the most vigorous sort, planned by a mind with a master grasp.

3

CHAPTER VI

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TRAINED NURSING IN GREAT BRITAIN

ONE must not set the work of Florence Nightingale as a hard-and-fast line between the old nursing and the new, nor between untrained and trained nurses. We have seen that since early times there were a few persons, keener in their insight than the rest, who had realized the place of nursing in society and had known that women must be trained if it was to be done rightly. Florence Nightingale was the greatest of these men and women of vision. She was doubtless the one who saw most clearly and constructively, who had the ability and the opportunity to put her thinking into immediate practice, and to watch its outcome.

There have been many different sorts of attempts at training nurses and improving in one way or another the quality of their work. They are all a part of the persistent effort of woman to take her place in the work of the world, a part of the great upward struggle of humanity.

Progress of the training idea naturally made more rapid progress with some nations than with others. England and her colonies led the way, while America followed very closely. Germany began sooner, but has gone more slowly and in her own way. The rest of the world has copied the methods of the schools in these countries, fitting their plans to individual circumstances.

England's Advance. The progress of nursing in England is typical of that in most other countries. It has

taken place on a larger scale than elsewhere, and the results achieved have affected the history of nursing as have events in no other country, unless it be the United States.

At the time of the Crimean War, doubtless, better nursing was being done on the Continent than in England, because the religious zeal of the Roman Catholic sisters and of the Deaconesses furnished so great an incentive. The Deaconess movement set the pace and laid down many of the principles upon which the English trainingschools were built.

ENGLISH NURSING CHRONOLOGY

From 1840 to 1852 there were a number of beginnings of training for nurses in England. Some of the associations then formed still exist. The Nursing Sisterhood of All Saints is a notable example, as well as St. John's House, to which reference has already been made. A chronologic account of the development of trained nursing in England will serve to show how many persons had the same germ idea and in how many ways and places it was being developed.1

1851

All Saints' Sisterhood was founded in London. It undertook the nursing of St. Elizabeth's Home for Incurable Women and Children.

1852

Dr. West began training nurses at the Children's Hospital in Great Ormond Street, London.

Queen Charlotte's Hospital gave training in obstetrics.

1 Much of the material used here was taken from "A Chronology of Nursing," in Sir Henry Burdette's "Hospitals and Asylums." A few quotations are also made from Nutting and Dock's "History of Nursing."

1854

Florence Nightingale went to the Crimea.

Dr. Neale organized the nursing Sisterhood of St. Margaret's, an order resembling the Deaconesses.

Dr. Browne, of Crichton, began to teach attendants in insane hospitals.

1855

Mrs. Wardroper, an untrained woman, aged forty-two, with no knowledge of hospitals, was put in charge of the nursing at St. Thomas', one of the older, good hospitals of London. By her efficiency and fine spirit she made the nursing so good that the hospital was later chosen as the best ground for the great Nightingale Training-school.

1856

Florence Nightingale returned to England.

1857

St. John's House undertook the nursing at King's College Hospital, and gave superior service.1

1858

Mrs. Coster was appointed superintendent of nurses at St. Pancras' Infirmary. She worked under the medical officers for six months, then began to teach her nurses according to her own ideas.

1859

William Rathbone, of Liverpool, a private citizen who was alive to the needs of his time, put a nurse at district

1 In 1874 the Sisterhood clashed with the management about the control of the nurses, but the Sisters remained until 1885, when the hospital began its own training-school.

work among the poor. This nurse's success was so marked that he decided to employ others, but could not find capable ones. He consulted Miss Nightingale, who suggested that the training of nurses be started at the Royal Infirmary of Liverpool. Mr. Rathbone was on its Board, and succeeded in convincing the authorities of the need of training for district work. In 1861 Miss Merryweather, from St. Thomas', was put in charge of the work, and from it finally grew a great district nursing association, thoroughly organized, with both nurses and lay workers. All her life Miss Nightingale kept in close touch with this work. It may be considered the beginning of modern organized district nursing.

Miss Nightingale published her "Notes on Nursing."

1862

Miss Nightingale founded a training-school for midwives at King's College Hospital, with a six months' course. It was discontinued after a few years on account of an obstinate epidemic of puerperal fever.

1865

William Rathbone extended his interest in nursing and became the founder of the reform in nursing at the Workhouse Infirmary of Liverpool. Through Miss Nightingale he secured as head of the reform Miss Agnes Jones, a highbred, cultured woman, fired with religious zeal, who had been trained first at Kaiserswerth and afterward at St. Thomas'. With twelve other Nightingale nurses, eighteen probationers, and fifty-four old pauper nurses she began the regeneration of the care of 1200 sick. The task was accomplished, but Miss Jones was sacrificed, for she died of typhus after three years of overwork. From