BADGE OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S Jubilee InstituTE FOR NURSES. TO FACE PAGE BADGE OF VICTORIAN ORDER OF NURSES FOR CANADA ATION 304 MEDAL OF THE BERRY WOOD ASYLUM TRAINING-SCHOOL FOR NURSES 304 General Superintendent, Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses. MISS PAULINE PETER ictoria 312 General Superintendent, Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute, 1893-1905. Superintendent, Scottish District Training Home, Q.V.J.I., Edinburgh. MISS WADE ‚Q.V.J.I.. Superintendent, Scottish District Training Home, Q.V.J.I., Edinburgh, ORDER OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN OF Jerusalem BADGE OF THE COLONIAL NURSING SERVICE THE HISTORY OF NURSING IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE CHAPTER I NURSING BEFORE 1840 Pagan indifference to the sick-St. Paul institutes deaconesses-The life and work of St. Paula-Nursing an outcome of religious devotion-Rise of general hospitals The Hospitalières-The Hôtel Dieu-Influence of the Crusades-The Abbess Hildegarde founds a school-Nursing in monastic infirmaries-Medical Brotherhoods-The Knights Hospitallers employ women-The Grey Sisters-The Béguines-Sisters of St. Elizabeth-A new era of nursing-St. Vincent de Paul-Founds the Association of Charity-Madame de Gondi-The Ladies of Charity-Remarkable inAluence of St. Vincent-Duchess d'Aiguillon-Madame GoussaultMadame le Gras-St. Vincent founds the Sisters of Charity-The estab lishment of the Sisterhood-St. Vincent's rules-Spread of the Sisterhood -They undertake every branch of nursing-Not cloistered nuns-The humanitarian spirit-First hospital nurses in London-St. Bartholomew's St. Thomas's Guy's Hospital-Quaint rules-Deterioration of nursing -Dr. Gooch attempts reform in 1825-Letters to Southey-"Religious female physicians"-England apathetic-Kaiserswerth founded-Ito influence on nursing in this country. BEFORE the Christian Era neither doctors nor nurses were in fashion. To quote one of Florence Nightingale's terse sentences, "Christ was the Author of the nursing profession." In Pagan times, those who had knowledge of the healing art practised it under the cloak of mystery. The sick and infirm were looked at askance, as people suffering from the displeasure of the gods, and therefore removed from the plane of sympathy. The survival of the fittest was concurred in with brutal stoicism, and the unfit left to pay the penalty of nature unheeded and uncared for. The poor little "wasters" whom one sees in the wards of our hospitals, being lovingly tended until the flickering life is nursed back to some degree of health and vigour, would have been made short work of by our Pagan forefathers. "What will be the future of this child?" I involuntarily asked, when standing by the cot of a baby-girl of fourteen months old, who had been brought into hospital in a neglected and emaciated condition, and was reported not to have a sound organ in her puny body. "We shall bring her round," said the sister, and quoted the jocose remark of the doctor, who, when a doubt was expressed as to whether baby would live, replied, "Live! Yes, she will probably live to be the mother of a criminal.' Poor little mite, there was sad truth in the cynicism. Still, the claim which even the most unpromising life has for the healing treatment is a tenet of the Christian faith, which differentiates it from the Pagan. Not that the ancients altogether ignored the claims of the sick and wounded. The army of Xerxes carried hospital tents for the wounded soldiers, and the Roman camp had its valetudinarium. Before the Christian Era, the Hindus and Buddhists had houses for the sick, but the nursing was done by men. Amongst the Druids of Gaul were wise women, who treated the sick. In early times there was a disposition to treat anything connected with the curing or relief of disease as emanating from spirits, and the wise women, skilled in the treatment of the sick, were dubbed witches or sorceresses, in the same way that a physician was held in awe as a magician practising an occult art. St. Paul was the pioneer of the nursing movement in the first century of the Christian Era, inasmuch as, with admirable perspicacity, he called the women of the early Church to the work of caring for the sick and infirm. The order of deaconesses which the apostle instituted was the prototype of modern religious and nursing sisterhoods. St. Chrysostom, in the fourth century, mentions forty deaconesses working amongst the sick and poor at Constantinople. In the records of these carly times the personality of that noble Roman lady, St. Paula, stands out in bold relief. A descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi, she was born in Rome in 348 A.D. Early left a widow, Paula determined to devote her time and her wealth to the cause of the sick and suffering. Rome, still in the bonds of Paganism, did not respond to her humanitarian efforts, and with the remains of her fortune she sailed in 385 for Palestine, and at Bethlehem of Judæa, fit cradle for such an enterprise, established a community of women devoted to prayer and good works, and established a hospital for the sick. The community were under no vows and made no profession, but they lived an austere life and spent their days in making clothes for the poor,. tending the sick of the district and the pilgrims overtaken by disease during their sojourn in the Holy Land. The community had a spiritual superior in St. Jerome, the friend and Master of Paula, with whom she read and studied. She is said to have had the care of the Saint when he was sick, and found him a difficult patient. Paula began her work in a poor little house at Bethlehem, assisted by her daughter, and gradually drew around her a community of women like-minded. Later she built a hospital or Hospice on the road to Jerusalem for the benefit of sick pilgrims, and also a monastery for St. Jerome. After her death she was canonized by the Roman Church. The story of her life contains this description of St. Paula-"She was marvellous debonair, and piteous to them that were sick, and comforted them and served them right humbly; and gave them largely to eat such as they asked; but to herself she was hard in her sickness and scarce, for she refused to eat flesh, how well she gave it to others and also drink and wine. She was oft by them that were sick, and she laid the pillows aright and in point; and she rubbed their feet and boiled water to wash them; and it seemed to her that the less she did to the sick in service, so much the less service did she to God, and deserved she less mercy; therefore she was to them piteous and nothing to herself." Such is the quaint and beautiful picture of the nurse fifteen hundred years ago. Nursing was originally an outcome of religious devotion. In the fourth and fifth centuries pious ladies, following the example of St. Paula, made it their vocation to care for the sick. The pilgrims who flocked to the Holy Land often fell ill by the way or during their sojourn contracted strange Eastern diseases. Hospices were founded on the pilgrim routes, and devout women counted it a duty and a privilege to nurse those stricken while on holy pilgrimage. Then came the rise of general hospitals, and the demand for nurses increased. The first hospital of the .kind was the Hôtel Dieu, founded at Lyons in 560 A.D. A hundred years later an Hôtel Dieu was established in Paris by Landry, Bishop of Paris. Nursing sisters, known as Hospitalières, were attached to these institutions. They gave their services and nursed from motives of piety, but were not nuns. Pope Innocent IV., thinking it desirable that they should have a recognized standing, placed them under the Augustine rule. The novitiate or period of training was for one year. The Saurs Hospitalières grew into a large body, and to them were entrusted, in conjunction with lay brothers, the nursing care of hospitals as they were established. For five hundred years they remained the only organized nursing sisterhood. An old wood engraving preserved in the Burgundy Library at Brussels shows a ward in the Hôtel Dieu, Paris, with the Hospitalières performing their duties. The nurses look very imposing in their ample dresses, large aprons, and dark hoods, and the ward appears to be most generously staffed. The patients are seen lying two in a bed. In one case a dying patient is receiving the last offices of the church from a priest, and it may be imagined that the situation was not exhilarating for his |