History of nursing

[3][4] Buddhist Indian ruler (268 BC to 232 BC) Ashoka erected a series of pillars, which included an edict ordering hospitals to be built along the routes of travelers, and that they be "well provided with instruments and medicine, consisting of mineral and vegetable drugs, with roots and fruits"; "Whenever there is no provision of drugs, medical roots, and herbs, they are to be supplied, and skillful physicians appointed at the expense of the state to administer them."

After she had led a group of women to treat injured fighters on the battlefield, Muhammad gave her permission to set up a tent near the Medina mosque to provide treatment and care for the ill and the needy.

From the account given by Paul the Deacon we learn that this hospital was supplied with physicians and nurses, whose mission included the care the sick wherever they were found, "slave or free, Christian or Jew.

Among the monasteries notable in this respect were those of the Benedictines at Corbie in Picardy, Hirschau, Braunweiler, Deutz, Ilsenburg, Liesborn, Pram, and Fulda; those of the Cistercians at Arnsberg, Baumgarten, Eberbach, Himmenrode, Herrnalb, Volkenrode, and Walkenried.

No less efficient was the work done by the diocesan clergy in accordance with the disciplinary enactments of the councils of Aachen (817, 836), which prescribed that a hospital should be maintained in connection with each collegiate church.

[18] According to Geoffrey Blainey, the Catholic Church in Europe provided many of the services of a welfare state: "It conducted hospitals for the old and orphanages for the young; hospices for the sick of all ages; places for the lepers; and hostels or inns where pilgrims could buy a cheap bed and meal".

[21] Meanwhile, in Catholic lands such as France, rich families continued to fund convents and monasteries, and enrolled their daughters as nuns who provided free health services to the poor.

The famous Knights Hospitaller arose as a group of individuals associated with an Amalfitan hospital in Jerusalem, which was built to provide care for poor, sick or injured Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.

The nuns provided comprehensive care for the sick poor on their patrons' estates, acting not only as nurses, but took on expanded roles as physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries.

[28] The Protestant reformers, led by Martin Luther, rejected the notion that rich men could gain God's grace through good works—and thereby escape purgatory—by providing cash endowments to charitable institutions.

The weakened public role of women left female practitioners restricted to assisting neighbors and family in an unpaid and unrecognized capacity.

The role had virtually died out centuries before, but was revived in Germany in 1836 when Theodor Fliedner and his wife Friederike Münster opened the first deaconess motherhouse in Kaiserswerth on the Rhine.

However recruiting became increasingly difficult after 1910 as women preferred graduate nursing schools or the social work curriculum offered by state universities.

Nightingale organized the cleaning of the entire hospital, ordered supplies, and implemented hygienic procedures such as hand washing to prevent the spread of infection.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women made inroads into various professions including teaching, journalism, social work, and public health.

These advances included the establishment of a Women's Medical College in Toronto (and in Kingston, Ontario) in 1883, attributed in part to the persistence of Emily Stowe, the first female doctor to practice in Canada.

The reliance on homeopathic remedies continued as trained nurses and doctors and how-to manuals slowly reached the homesteaders in the early 20th century.

The mission was governed by a volunteer board of women directors and began by raising money for its first year of service through charitable donations and payments from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Irene Parlby, the UFWA's first president, lobbied for the establishment of a provincial Department of Public Health, government-provided hospitals and doctors, and passage of a law to permit nurses to qualify as registered midwives.

Founded in 1919 to meet maternal and emergency medical needs by the United Farm Women (UFWA), the Nursing Service treated prairie settlers living in primitive areas lacking doctors and hospitals.

Nurses provided prenatal care, worked as midwives, performed minor surgery, conducted medical inspections of schoolchildren, and sponsored immunization programs.

The post-Second World War discovery of large oil and gas reserves resulted in economic prosperity and the expansion of local medical services.

Faced with the long hours and low pay, many soon married and left the field, while the Catholic sisters had renounced marriage and saw nursing as their God-given vocation.

In the eighteenth century, these doctresses included Seacole's mother, who was a mixed-race woman who was most likely a child of a slave, and who acquired medical knowledge of herbal remedies from West African ancestors.

Australian Nurses hold the record for the maximum number of triage cases processed by a casualty station in a twenty-four-hour period during the battle of Passchendale.

They were often close to the front lines, and the military doctors – all men – delegated significant responsibility to the nurses because of the high level of casualties, the shortages of physicians, and extreme working conditions.

[82][83] In 1942, sixty five front line nurses from the General Hospital Division in British Singapore were ordered aboard the Vyner Brook and Empire Star for evacuation, rather than caring for wounded.

The twenty-one nurses and some British and Australian troops were marched into the sea and killed with machine gun fire in the Banka Island massacre.

At around the same time, another group of twelve nurses stationed at the Rabaul mission in New Guinea were captured along with missionaries by invading Japanese troops and interred at their camp for two years.

Red Cross nurses served widely within the military medical services, staffing the hospitals that perforce were close to the front lines and at risk of bombing attacks.