154 A Short History of Nursing nearly seventy years old. Mrs. Hobson, in her Recollectiofis of a Happy Life, tells us that Sister Helen's position was next held by Miss Van Rens- selaer, one of the first class of graduates. She held it only a short time before entering a religious sisterhood. The Bellevue Training School for Nurses was the first in the United States, which was definitely based on Miss Nightingale's uncom- The Night- . . . ingale promising doctrine that all control system ^ygj. ^-j^g nursing staff as to selection, m Bellevue discipline, rotation in hospital wards, and standards of teaching, of ethics and of morals, should be placed in the hands of a Matron or Superintendent, who must herself be a trained nurse, and responsible to the hospital and medical authorities for the faithful carrying out of medical orders and institutional regulations. The training school committee had to choose the superintendent of nurses and be responsible for the general char- acter of the school. The managers stood so squarely on this policy, as set forth by Mrs. Hobson in her writings, and so new was it in hospital circles here, that it has been called, in the United States, the Bellevue system, and has often been severely criti- cized by hospital authorities, who held that the male hospital superintendent, whether layman or
