Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/273

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257
A Short History of Nursing

Nursing in other Countries 257 the officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and are at all times to be obeyed accordingly and to re- ceive the respect due to their position. ' ' While this did not confer actual military rank, it did, aided by army traditions, give British army nurses a firm po- sition and one of dignity and responsible authority. The work of visiting nurses among the poor, estabHshed by Mr. Rathbone of Liverpool (1862) now covers Great Britain with a close visiting network of affiliated societies. In 1887 nursing the Women's Jubilee offering to Queen Victoria, devoted by the Queen to promote visiting nursing, brought all related work together and enabled extensions to be made under the name of Oueen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses. The pro- fessional standards required for the staff were the very highest, but the Institute also employed an inferior grade of women known as "village nurses." These had a short nursing training and a midwifery certificate. When needed they were placed in the patients' cottages for a week or two at a time. Public school nursing arose in England in 189 1. At that time a nurse was asked for from the Me- tropolitan Nursing Association to visit public school the Drury Lane District School. Amy nursing Hughes was sent, and from her intelligent care of the children radiated other and similar ser- 17