"The Evolution of Nursing"

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVI, Issue 3, 1 July 1927, Page 158

"The Evolution of Nursing"

In connection with the Matrons' Conference, Miss Moore gave a short address on "The Evolution of Nursing," and showed a number of lantern slides which she uses in illustration of lectures on the history of nursing. These illustrated nursing from primitive times down to the present day, and showed some of the early methods of cure when disease was believed to be due to evil spirits and the medicine man of a tribe brought spells to exercise these spirits. Early instances of sweat baths and cupping were shown to be found among the Egyptians and other early races, and a picture of the first known god of medicine found in Memphis and dated as far back as 1000 8.C., was shown. Pictures of the great people in medicine and healing were among the slides, Esculapius and his daughter Hygeia (thought to be one of the first nurses), who taught that disease could be prevented, Dorcas, who in the early Christian period was the first district nurse and taught the Roman women to nurse their sick, Fabriona in Rome; Hildegarde, in Germany; St. Francis, of Assissi; Clare, who founded an Order of Nurses; St. Elizabeth, of Hungary; the St. John Hospitallers in Jerusalem; the Order of Beguins in Belgium ; the brothers of the Misericordiae, in Florence; down to Florence Nightingale and her band of trained women. Pictures were shown also of hospitals at different periods, a picture of a Roman operating

theatre, the earliest known picture of dissecting, and the hospital of the Knights in Valetta. In the early hospitals the patients wore no clothing, and were accommodated several in a bed; in others the beds were heavily curtained and were well away from ventilation, all offices (even to a funeral service) were performed in the ward, and even to St. Bartholomews, less than a hundred years, ago, there were curtains to each bed. The pictures carried on to the first training school for nurses at St. Thomas' and showed the early reformers in medicine and nursing. John Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Pasteur, Lister, and W. Rathbone, who reformed the old, bad method of district nursing. At the conclusion a heart;y vote of thanks was passed to Miss Moore. A vote of thanks to the Minister of Public Health for the interest he had displayed in the Conference was passed. After the lecture the visitors went to St. Helens Hospital, where they were shown over the Hospital by the Matron, Miss Newman and Dr Agnes Bennett. They spent a most enjoyable and instructive hour, and a delicious tea was provided before they left. At the conclusion of the Conference, Miss Inglis, Hon. Secretary of the N.Z. Trained Nurses' Association, urged the obligation of all nurses to become members of the Association, and to subscribe to their own journal, "Kai Tiaki."