Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
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![part there was little or no scientific training or application eTon of existing knowledge to the task of nursing. The sionks and nuns owed their first alleglanee to the rites of the church, not to their patient's needs. Hursing was a penance, not a profession. Yet, as special nursing religious orders grew, espeeiallj in tlasa of war, the traditional strict diclpllne of nurses' ti^ining beeaoe crystaXized through long association of nursing with authoritative regiaens of aedieal, reli^us and Bilitary life. With the advent of the Protestant Heformation and the expaasion of wealth based on commerce and nanufactures, the power of the feudal church declined. The care of the sick fell to tax-supported hospitals. The nurse beeane a paid servant of the city and the cheapest aerrice the city fathers could find. Izanatas of work- houses and penal inetltutlons were sentenced to care for the sick poor. Without religious inspiration, without education, without scientific training, without wages or leieux^ - they were usually pitiable, despised creatures. In our own Bellerue Hospital, following the Clrll War, Buoh of the nursing was done by drumkon prostitutes who, m the notorioue flre-polnt police courts of Eew York City, were given their option of going to prison or to hospital service. These wowm were often found drunk oador the beds of their dead patients whose liquor they had stolen. / But little better than this is Dickens* Sarah (kunp, She was a fat old woaan, 1 was this Mrs. Oanp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up and only showing the white of It. laving very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whoa she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. The face of Mrs. (kmp, the nose in particular^ was soaswhat V red and swollen. It was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a am/all of spirits. Like most persons who have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers very kindly] insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lylng^n or a laying-out with equal zest and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452214_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
