Sick-nursing essentially a woman's mission : being the inaugural lecture on the qualifications for and the conduct of sick-nurses delivered at the opening of the new School of Nursing in Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on May 1, 1877 / by Dyce Duckworth.

  • Duckworth, Sir Dyce, 1840-1928.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sick-nursing essentially a woman's mission : being the inaugural lecture on the qualifications for and the conduct of sick-nurses delivered at the opening of the new School of Nursing in Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on May 1, 1877 / by Dyce Duckworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    this with the other royal hospitals to the care of the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of the city in 1546, the new governing body bound themselves to establish upon the staff witliin three months' time ' a matron and twelve women under her to make the beds and wash and attend on' the inmates, who were then limited to one hundred in number. The matron was to receive £2 Qs. ScL, and each of the twelve women forty shillings yearly. The archives of the hospital afford plain evidence that this nursing staff was at work in 154-7, and that it was regularly disciplined. In 1557 separate charges were drawn up for the matron and for the nurses and keepers of the wards ; and of these it may be said that so excellent and comprehensive were they that they might very fairly be employed to this day. Indeed, some of the points insisted upon are enforced at the present time. From that period the record of devoted and un- selfish service rendered here, could we but gather it, would fill a volume. We can never know even a little of all that should be told about this ; but I can tell you something of the lives and characteristics of a few of the best sisters or nurses who have served this old foundation within the memory of its present officers. The arrangements under which they worked are about to be changed; and in closing this chapter of the hospital history it will be but fair to the memory