Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/144

128 128 A Short History of Nursing For many years Miss Nightingale had a world- wide and unparalleled influence not only in hospital best known of her books are Notes on Hospitals (1858), and Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and What it Is Not (1859). These two works, aided by her personal influence, brought about a new point of view. She also went deeply into the subject of midwifery and wrote a book on this subject. The specially revolutionary feature of Miss Nightingale's plan for nurse-training has been to a singular degree overlooked by commentators and even by nurses. It was, in short, nothing else than the positive mandate that the entire control of a nursing staff, as to discipline and teaching, must be taken out of the hands of men, and lodged in those of a woman, who must herself be a trained and competent nurse. Before her school opened, nurses were entirely controlled as to discipline, routine of work, and plan of education or no educa- tion, by hospital directors and medical staffs, Hospital Matrons, indeed, within a fixed sphere were endowed with autocratic powers. This was the English system. But those powers were Notes on hospitals and on nursing and nursing matters, but in general questions relating to health and sick- ness, for all the world laid its problems before her for her advice. The two