AMERICA'S FIRST TRAINED NURSE
America's First Trained Nurse LINDA RICHARDS, the first woman in America to enter the field of professional nursing, has told the story of her life in a book recently published by Whitcomb &...
...The Macmillan Company, New York...
...How cold and dismal were the hours between midnight and three o'clock in the morning...
...If any work was to be done, a candle must be lighted, and only two candles a week were allowed each ward...
...On one occasion she made written notes of a serious case expecting to hand them to the superintendent...
...Upon her advice this training school was managed by the hospital itself instead of by a separate board...
...Because Miss Richards had applied first for entrance she was first in the class of five to be given her diploma and thus earned the title "America's First Trained Nurse...
...At midnight all the steam was turned off...
...One could see only the dim outlines of figures wrapped in gray blankets lying upon the beds...
...The science of nutrition is a growing and expanding science which presents many interesting and unsettled problems, but it is a science which already embodies much information of practical value which never reaches the general public...
...If more were used the nurse had to provide them...
...She certainly might have been pardoned for feeling that the profession had reached the limits of perfection...
...At the end of the year's training each nurse was quietly handed her diploma...
...The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition TEXT BOOKS do not as a rule interest the general reader but there are occasional exceptions and Dr...
...The discussion of this subject and the tables which show the percentage of each mineral constituent in all the common food materials instead of bringing together all the minerals, the iron, the phosphorus, the calcium, and others, under one head, will prove to be of great value, particularly to those who are interested in the important subject of food for children...
...While the book covers all matters relating to the composition of foods and their use to the body, it treats most fully the subject of the mineral constituents, Dr...
...who desire to make their scientific knowledge helpful in a practical way...
...With this record before us of many such experiences as nurse at Bellevue Hospital during its early days, it is almost a surprise to find her saying at the close of her book: "Fifty years from now nurses will look back and say that we did not know very much about nursing in the first decade of the Twentieth Century...
...In January, 1878, she became Matron and Superintendent of the Training School of the Boston City Hospital...
...What we nurses should do to prevent narrowness is to find out what other hospitals and schools are doing, the large hospitals and the small, the wealthy hospitals and the poorer ones, and to let ourselves be broadened by this knowledge...
...This was the beginning of a custom now universal in all hospitals...
...Sherman seems to be one of those investigators who combine a scientific attitude toward that which is yet unproved with a desire to make that which is proved immediately available for those who need it...
...In 1885 she organized the first training school for nurses in Japan...
...355.—Price $1.50 net...
...GOETHE FORESHADOWED much modern insight when he declared that in every fault of the child lies hidden the un-corrupted germ of a virtue...
...Instead she counsels all nurses to avoid ruts, saying "When we do get out of the ruts and stand upon solid ground it surprises even ourselves to find how broad we can be and how narrow we have been...
...121, $1.00 net...
...H. C. Sherman...
...She said, 'Go to the warden and tell him.' Under the solemn promise to use no more gas than would enable us to fulfill our duties, and to turn off all gas as soon as it was light we were allowed night light...
...This was the first training school for nurses to become an organic part of hospital administration...
...It falls among the exceptions, partly because it is readable in its style and partly because it has appeared at a time when the efficiency of the human body considered as a machine fer doing work is a subject of popular discussion...
...After graduating Miss Richards went to Bellevue Hospital, New York as Night Superintendent...
...At the end of my first month I told Sister Helen (the superintendent) I could not be responsible for the patients until I could have light in the wards...
...Destructiveness and meddling mature with proper training into constructiveness and industry, and even pugnacity and obstinacy are the trade forms of virile and dynamic character.—Edward O. Sisson...
...Sherman's "Chemistry of Food and Nutrition," written for the use of his students in Columbia University, is one of them...
...The University of Washington...
...at 3 a. m. it was turned on again, and the crackling of the pipes would waken every one in the wards...
...America's First Trained Nurse LINDA RICHARDS, the first woman in America to enter the field of professional nursing, has told the story of her life in a book recently published by Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston...
...Miss Richards' whole life was one of pioneering...
...Of this experience she writes: "No sooner had the day nurses left the wards than the gas was turned so low that the faces of the patients could not be distinguished...
...The captain of the night watch made several rounds of the wards through the night, and at 5 a. m. he turned off all the gas, leaving us in total darkness...
...WHEN Miss Richards entered Bellevue all reports on the condition of patients were made verbally...
...1911...
...The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition by Dr...
...She was the first student to matriculate in the first training school for nurses in this country, that established by Dr...
...It would be as absurd to think that the highest bodily efficiency could be attained without some attention to the matter of food as it would be to think that any one person or group of persons had spoken the final word on the subject of diet...
...He found it so valuable that he asked to have written reports of all serious cases...
...A visiting physician saw the report and thought it was for him...
...Susan Dimock at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in September 1872...
...there were no text books and no examinations...
...The course of training in this school lasted for one year only...
...Reminiscences of America's First Trained Nurse, by Linda Richards, Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston, Cloth, pp...
...Sherman's own field of investigation...
...Patients took advantage of this condition to leave their beds and give trouble in many ways...
...there were twelve lectures given by the visting staff of physicians and a small amount of bedside or practical instruction by young internes who took great care that the nurses should know neither the names of the medicines that were given nor the reasons for administering them, the bottles being designated by number only...
Vol. 3 • June 1911 • No. 22
