Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/143

127 Florence Nightingale 127 this, and it was established in St. Thomas's hospital, in May, i860, under the superintendency of Mrs. Wardroper, Matron of the hos- The pital. However, Miss Nightingale kept Nightingale in the closest touch with the school training ^•11 11 1 school for until her old age, and was for many nurses at years in effect its superintendent, for St. Thomas's 1. hospital every detail of management was re- ferred to her and she became personally ac- quainted with every probationer. Her intention for the school was, not that it should provide nurses for private duty, but that it should train them to go into other hospitals and there, in turn, organize, teach, and train. Her favourite phrase was "Nursing Mission ers. " The Nightingale nurses were to be the leaven by which the entire nursing world as it then existed was to be altered. This master plan was brilliantly carried out, as the history of pioneer nursing in other countries shows. The whole existing system of nursing in civil hospitals was revolutionized by the introduction into them of educated, trained, and refined women. There was opposition at first, but it gradually died away, and a new era resulted in hospital work, gradually bringing on, also, an equally startling change in private duty and home care.