Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/159

143 CHAPTER VIII NURSING IN AMERICA NCIENT Mexico, said Bancroft, had hos- pitals well endowed and attended by physi- cians, surgeons, and nurses. Medicine was a study dating from remote antiquity, and women physicians were common, while all obstetricians were women. In the time of the Spanish occupa- tion of Mexico hospitals still existing Early today were built, such as the Immacu- French and late Conception in the city of Mexico Spanish / 1, . , . ^ hospitals (1524), and a hospital m Santa F6 (153 1 ). These antedated the oldest hospitals in Canada, which were the Hotel-Dieu of Quebec (1639) and of Montreal (1642). The former was staffed by a group of French nuns of the Augus- tinian order sent out by a niece of Cardinal Riche- lieu, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon; the latter by Sis- ters of the order of St. Joseph de la Fl^che, under the leadership of Jeanne Mance, a remarkable woman who, at the age of thirty-four, felt a call