The Past and Future 347 abilities began to be swept away and women won the chance to educate and train themselves for useful service in other vocations. Here again, nursing led the way in organizing the first real system of vocational training for women on any- thing like modern lines. As the first organizers on any large scale of independent associations of professional women, nurses have also done pioneer work, though their struggle for professional independence would prob- ably have been even more difficult than it was, but for the steady advance of women's education and the growing strength of the whole women's movement. With political enfranchisement there is more and more hope that in our own and other countries, women may be freed from many of their ancient disabilities and may be able to give their strength more freely and fully to nursing and to other branches of public service. There is some little tendency at the present time to draw rather marked distinctions between the field of nursing and what is commonly Nursing and called the field of social work. Histori- social work cally they were all one. We have seen, how from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, the nurse (or the social worker if one prefers the title) cared not only for the sick, but for the foundling and the
