Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/55

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Chapter III
Trained and Semi-trained Nursing

Tue profession of nursing is just now in the throes of what might be termed a social upheaval. For ten years, when the training-school for nurses first offered an entrance to a profitable career for women, it passed through the romantic period. Would-be nurses's aw themselves as charming figures in uniform, veritable angels of mercy, particularly to good-looking young men and to elderly persons in search of heiresses. The halo of the ministering angel—always with a becoming fluff of hair under it—held a conspicuous position in their dreams of a hospital career.

To-day nursing, having passed Gaharnod through this romantic era, is reaching a purely scientific basis. The high standard, physical, mental and moral, demanded of probationers and student nurses, and the long period of relentless training, have landed the nurse where's he belongs, close to the physician's elbow. In this day of drugless cures, the intelligence, judg-