Vocational Nursing: History

During her parents' 3-year honeymoon in Europe, Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. She was named after her birthplace.

From The Palgrave MacMillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
English nurse. The daughter of a clergyman, Edith worked as a governess then trained as a nurse, working through a typhoid epidemic before graduating at the London Hospital.

Civil War Nurse, Founder of the American Red Cross. Clara Barton was the most famous of many women who worked heroically to provide care and comfort to wounded Civil War soldiers. In so doing, she and others like her raised the nation’s standards for the care of its fallen soldiers.

From Encyclopedia of Free Blacks and People of Color in the Americas
“Mother” Mary Seacole (née Grant) was a prominent nurse and public health campaigner in Britain during the Crimean War (1854-56). Less well known than Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), she may have had as great an influence on the well-being of British soldiers during that conflict. She is one of the pioneers of modern nursing.

Margaret Sanger, feminist and activist, has been identified as the founder of the birth control movement. Sanger believed that women needed accurate information and knowledge about their own bodies.

Dorothea Dix was a renowned social reformer and vocal advocate for the humane treatment of people with psychiatric disabilities.

From The Palgrave MacMillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
When the International Council of Women met in London in 1899, Ethel took the opportunity, through the Matrons’ Council, to organize an International Council of Nurses, the first such organization among health professions, or professional women. She became its first President.

In The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
Nursing of the sick, injured, and wounded has been performed by a variety of individuals, from the Roman tent companions and recuperating patients to Catholic nuns and Protestant deaconesses. Modern American nursing, however, developed in the post–Civil War period as part of the women's movement. Its impetus lay in the British example of Florence Nightingale, as well as the many women who gained recognition in the American Civil War for nursing soldiers. Nursing quickly became one of the breakthrough “new” occupations—along with librarian, social worker, elementary school teacher, and secretary—pioneered by women. Professional nursing accompanied the rise of general hospitals in America. The first three “Nightingale” schools opened in 1876: at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and at the Connecticut Training School in New Haven.

From Encyclopedia of Women's Health
Nursing care was given by family members for many centuries and soldiers took care of wounded comrades in battles. However, nursing education did not begin until the 1800s when a hospital in Kaiserswerth, Germany, opened a training school for deaconesses in 1836. Doctors began educating women about childcare and nursing. Florence Nightingale, the forerunner of modern nursing, spent a short time there gaining a limited amount of formal training.

From Encyclopedia of Nursing Research
The first public health policy act was signed on July 16, 1798, by President John Adams.

In The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History
It is this concern for patient safety that over the last several years has had the greatest influence in moving nurses like those in Petoskey from the bedside to the picket line outside hospitals across the country.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, taught the prevention of disease through a regimen of diet and exercise; he emphasized careful observation of the patient, the recuperative powers of nature, and a high standard of ethical conduct, as incorporated in the Hippocratic Oath.

From Key Concepts in Public Health
The association between human disease and the growth of centres of population has long been observed and the concept of action at a community or population level to influence health is not new;

From The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment
By the latter half of the nineteenth century, hospitals had become sites of medical instruction and innovation where a much broader segment of the population could seek care.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Medical science has developed by gradual steps from very early times. For a long time many people practised sympathetic medicine, in which plants were used to cure the organs they were thought to resemble. Great advances in medical practice came in the 1700s and 1800s, with a more scientific approach to the use of drugs. Surgery was difficult because of the lack of anaesthetics and the frequency with which wounds became septic and killed the patient. The advent of antiseptics, and of reliable anaesthetics, revolutionized surgery, and the development of the nursing profession improved patient care. In the 1900s modern advances in drugs and surgical practices revolutionized medicine, and as a result more people are able to enjoy good health and live longer.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Starting with the ancient Greeks through modern times.