A LINK WITH THE PAST.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3138, 9 October 1922, Page 7

A LINK WITH THE PAST.

(London Daily Telegraph.; The Crimean War and all that it suggested once of concentrated effort and suffering is but a dim memory, and it is strange to learn that one or the little band of nurses who accompanied Florence Nightingalt on her mission of mercy has lingered on the stage so long. Miss Elizabeth Bidwell was 91 years old when she passed away the other day at Warminster. For upwards of half a century, after an experience which has a foremost place in the history of modern nursing, she had been content with the simple domestic role of family nurse. What a transition from the noise and danger of the field of battle to the quiot and security of a nursery! Her life spanned not one age, but a succession of ages. She was born in the reign of William IV., when Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge were still alive. Parliament was unreformed, bread was a luxury, and slavery existed in the oversea plantations. She remained' to see the steam engine triumph by sea and land, the motor car to assert ite ascendancy on. our roads, and the aeroplane to conquer the air. But as a nurse she was a special witness of the advance of nursing as a profession. In her girlhood the care of the sick was of small account — a menial occupation. When Florence Nightingale left her father's well-provided, and even luxurious, home, to go out to the Crimea, women generally had forgotten that religion, war, and science had conspired to make nursing an occupation' to be held in highest esteem. The virtuous and kindly consort of Theodosius J. had not considered it beneath her royal estate to tend the sick in the Imperial City of Borne. Other women of gentle birth had from time to time devoted themselves to this womanly work. But, generally, nursing, as Charles Dickens was to show, bad fallen into disrepute. But this state of affairs was altered m the period which followed the Crimean War. Nursing changed in its methods and in the type of woman it attracted! to its practice. To-day no profession, stands higher in public esteem, or is more honored by all classes. Under the impulse of the Great AVar it blossomed forth in a new glory of achievement. It became the pride of every woman to claim that she had helped to nurse the wounded, either overseas or in one of our hospitals in this island. When the tale of our victory comes to he written, the essential services of the nurses, professional and amateur, will certainly not be forgotten. And Miss Elizabeth Bidwell, of Crimean days, lived to watch the transformation and' to share in the new dignity which has descended on all nurses, whether they fulfil their mission on tbo battlefield, in the hospital, or in the ,'ome.