Extensions of Nursing Field 195 carried on to some extent by religious orders, and that in Miss Nightingale's time it was established as a definite branch of secular profession- Visiting al nursing. The earliest organized nursing visiting nursing in the United States was carried on by the Women's Branch of the New York City Missions (1877). Some of the first graduate nurses from Bellevue entered this service in order to work in the tenements. Its scope was, however, limited to the congregations of the mission churches. Visiting nursing extended steadily during the suc- ceeding years. This country did not create a nation-wide centralized visiting nurse association as Great Britain and Canada did, but developed local groups, formed independently of each other. The Boston Instructive Visiting Nursing Associa- tion and the Philadelphia Society were founded in 1888; the Chicago Association in 1890; the Henry Street Nurses' Settlement in 1 893 ; the Baltimore As- sociation in 1 896. The first municipal visiting nurs- ing service was established in Los Angeles, in 1898. When the older and more conventional work of visiting nursing was united to the settlement idea of living in and identifying one's self Nurses' with a neglected district, with the settlements rounded purpose of applying all one's civic and personal, as well as professional gifts, to its service,
