The first nurses were Nuns

[LivingWordUnity]

Even though it's a fact that Saint Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity brought nursing to the world 200 years before the birth of Florence Nightingale, I believe that popular credit was given to Florence Nightingale as being the original nurse because she wasn't a nun, and Protestantism had spread throughout the West after the Reformation putting Protestants in the political position to write popular history with their anti-Catholic agenda.

Say Little, Do Much
Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century
Sioban Nelson


"A convincing picture."—New York Times

In the nineteenth century, more than a third of American hospitals were established and run by women with religious vocations. In Say Little, Do Much, Sioban Nelson casts light on the work of these women's religious communities. According to Nelson, the popular view that nursing invented itself in the second half of the nineteenth century is historically inaccurate and dismissive of the major advances in the care of the sick as a serious and skilled activity, an activity that originated in seventeenth-century France with Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity.

In this comparative, contextual, and critical work, Nelson demonstrates how modern nursing developed from the complex interplay of the Catholic emancipation in Britain and Ireland, the resurgence of the Irish Church, the Irish diaspora, and the mass migrations of the German, Italian, and Polish Catholic communities to the previously Protestant strongholds of North America and mainland Britain. In particular, Nelson follows the nursing Daughters of Charity through the French Revolution and the Second Empire, documenting the relationship that developed between the French nursing orders and the Irish Catholic Church during this period. This relationship, she argues, was to have major significance for the development of nursing in the English-speaking world.

"A convincing picture."—New York Times

"The most significant contribution to the literature on nursing history in decades."—Journal of Community Nursing

"Required reading for all nurse historians who seek to understand the difficult and complex role of religious women who served nursing prior to our modern era."—Nursing History Review

"Well-researched, scholarly, clearly written, and nicely analyzed, this work makes a significant addition to the historiography of nursing."—Choice
Sioban Nelson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Postgraduate Nursing at The University of Melbourne.

Source:
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13545.html

 

[Sphinx777]

A nurse is responsible—along with other health care professionals—for the treatment, safety, and recovery of acutely or chronically ill or injured people, health maintenance of the healthy, and treatment of life-threatening emergencies in a wide range of health care settings. Nurses may also be involved in medical and nursing research and perform a wide range of non-clinical functions necessary to the delivery of health care. Nurses also provide care at birth and death. There is currently a shortage of nurses in the United Kingdom, United States and a number of other developed countries.

 

[Anhelyna]

That has never been in question - nursing was seen as a vocation .

Nuns saw it just as part of their vocation - caring for the sick whom at that time were marginalised.

Florence came into it because she believed it was a vocation , realised that training was needed and also brought the care of ill people out of the dark ages. She had a different and equally valid outlook. Frm her influence we now have a well trained professional and mainly secular, profession.

 

[Radagast]

Florence came into it because she believed it was a vocation , realised that training was needed and also brought the care of ill people out of the dark ages. She had a different and equally valid outlook. Frm her influence we now have a well trained professional and mainly secular, profession.

Florence Nightingale was inspired by the work of nuns in continental Europe, and visited the Sisters of Charity in Paris early on. But she also brought her mathematical and scientific training to nursing, pioneering infection-control techniques, and using statistics to work out where the biggest problems were. Her book contributed greatly to nursing training. She is, justly in my opinion, given credit for the creation of the modern nursing profession, especially in the UK.

I don't think the recognition of Florence Nightingale's role represents anti-Catholic bias, but rather a recognition of her contribution to the development of the profession. Let her own words speak:

The everyday management of a large ward, let alone of a hospital–the knowing what are the laws of life and death for men, and what the laws of health for wards–(and wards are healthy or unhealthy, mainly according to the knowledge or ignorance of the nurse)–are not these matters of sufficient importance and difficulty to require learning by experience and careful inquiry, just as much as any other art? They do not come by inspiration to the lady disappointed in love, nor to the poor workhouse drudge hard up for a livelihood.

And terrible is the injury which has followed to the sick from such wild notions!

In this respect (any why is it so?), in Roman Catholic countries, both writers and workers are, in theory at least, far before ours. They would never think of such a beginning for a good working Superior or Sister of Charity. And many a Superior has refused to admit a Postulant who appeared to have no better "vocation" or reasons for offering herself than these.

It is true we make "no vows." But is a "vow" necessary to convince us that the true spirit for learning any art, most especially an art of charity, aright, is not a disgust to everything or something else? Do we really place the love of our kind (and of nursing, as one branch of it) so low as this? What would the Mère Angélique of Port Royal, what would our own Mrs. Fry have said to this?

 

[LivingWordUnity]

That has never been in question - nursing was seen as a vocation .

Nuns saw it just as part of their vocation - caring for the sick whom at that time were marginalised.

Florence came into it because she believed it was a vocation , realised that training was needed and also brought the care of ill people out of the dark ages. She had a different and equally valid outlook. Frm her influence we now have a well trained professional and mainly secular, profession.

That's a very harsh statement. Can you please elaborate on what exactly you mean by that and give specific examples? Are you including the Daughters of Charity in this assessment of nursing before Florence Nightingale? I don't believe that there would have been a Florence Nightingale if there hadn't first been the Daughters of Charity.

History of the Daughters of Charity

How We Began
In 1633, a French widow named Louise de Marillac and a French priest named Vincent de Paul founded the Daughters of Charity to serve the poor of France.

Saint Vincent de Paul had organized the first "Charities" (or Confraternities) in 1617. The Confraternities were composed of women from relatively modest backgrounds, who wished to devote themselves to the service of the poor and the sick in their villages or parishes.

Saint Vincent de Paul brought these Confraternities to Paris, where the number of young women serving in them grew. In 1630, Saint Vincent de Paul entrusted these young girls to Louise de Marillac, who was already assisting him in the organization, visitation and follow-up of the Confraternities. The young women were then dispersed throughout Paris, each one serving in a different Confraternity.

Louise de Marillac quickly realized the need to bring the young volunteers together so that she could give them a better formation and accompany them in their corporal and spiritual services. With Saint Vincent de Paul’s authorization, Louise de Marillac brought the young women together, and on November 29, 1633, she received the first six Daughters into her home. This date marks the official "birth" of the Company of the Daughters of Charity.

The Daughters of Charity were unlike the established religious communities at that time. Up to this point, all religious women were behind cloister walls and performed a ministry of contemplative prayer. Saint Vincent de Paul, however, wanted the Daughters to be free to walk the streets of Paris in response to the needs of the poor, and to live among the people society had most abandoned. He recommended that his Daughters care for the poor in their homes, so that they might get to know the poor in their natural setting.

Almost two centuries later, Elizabeth Seton, the American founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, adapted the rule of the French Daughters of Charity for her Emmitsburg, Maryland community. In 1850, the Emmitsburg community united with the international community based in Paris, thus beginning the first American community of the Daughters of Charity.
Source:
http://www.daughters-of-charity.org/history.htm

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[Anhelyna]

Have you read Dickens ?

Look at the example of Sarah Gamp

Nurses /midwives looked after people to the best of their ability - but they weren't really trained .

Nuns /Nursing sisters looked after people as well as they could - they saw Christ in them - it was a different attitude to the suffering.

Where Florence was different was that she started by looking at HOW people were cared for - the Army Hospitals had a really bad reputation - deservedly - they were cramped , ventilation was poor [ air was bad for you ] etc etc. She improved conditions and eventually nursing was seen as a profession - and has evolved as we see it today.

Yes , as Radagast says , she was influenced by the Nursing orders and she then went on from there

 

[isabella1]

Interesting thread.

I believe the first nurses were actually Mothers in the home. They knew all the remedies to make their families well, and worked closely for the doctors. They cared for their neighbors who were ill. They also passed on their knowledge to their daughters and instructed and helped young wives and new mothers.

I have worked in the medical field most of my life. I find nurses amazing. I see in each one a call to their vocation. Nursing has become quite the field. So many of them serve from the heart and go above and beyond the call of duty.

I think our God given ability as woman, has a big part to play in this profession. Without compassion, love, and the desire to nurture, there would be no nurses.

 

[elliotps932]

very nice thread!

 

[Globalnomad]

If we define a nurse as a trained paraprofessional who assists doctors in caring for the sick, especially in a hospital, then the history goes bak way beyond the Sisters of Charity. The Knight Hospitallers - the Order of Malta - started, back in the tenth century, as a Hospitaller order, caring for sick pilgrims to the Holy Land, before it became a military order. And they were the first to train their people properly, according to the best medical knowledge of the day. There was a time, while they were in Malta, that their hospital was known as one of the top "teaching hospitals" of the West.

 

[Sphinx777]

Knights of Saint John

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