194 A Short History of Nursing and relationships of the sick one, that the physical cure may not be retarded by anxiety or unhappi- ness. It has grown to a highly developed special field of service, employing medical men, nurses, trained social workers, and unpaid volunteers. It is closely related to visiting nursing and to all the specialties of public health conservation, and links up the institutional care with the personal re- sponsibilities of the outside world. Hospital social service in rudimentary form may doubtless be traced far, even if not continuously, in history. The early Christians, the Saracens, the Knights Hospitallers, the Dames de la Charite, all exempli- fied something of this social sense. Miss Nightin- gale in the Crimea gave its first and best modern example, in her organized system of caring for the economic and social needs of her patients. In our most recent times there seems little doubt that hospital social service grew up from the more or less haphazard efforts of nurses and doctors to follow up and help further those among their patients who made a special appeal. Every nurse remembers many such efforts, made to find out home conditions and relieve family distress. We need not try to trace visiting nursing farther back than to the deaconesses of che early church. We know that from their day it has always been
