Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/160

144 144 A Short History of Nursing to go from her home in France to the new world of Canada. She led there a long life of great useful- ness. Her statue may be seen on the Maisonneuve Monument in the Place d'Armes of Montreal. The Grey Nuns have also had a large share in pioneer hospital and emergency nursing work in Canada in the early days. The New England settlers brought with them their customs and beliefs from the old world, and, in the hardships of their pioneer life, The early. ... settlements had little time or inclination to foster in the ^j^g humanities. Nursing and medical States work were not encouraged by the Pun- tan spirit, which regarded disease as punishment for sin, revived the superstitious notions of witch- craft, and laboured under a heavy belief in infant damnation and other hopeless doctrines. One must wonder whether certain ones among the Puritans did not suffer from chronic indigestion of a severe type, and whether this caused, or was caused by, their mental forms. The religious ideas of those gloomy Protestants led them to oppose strongly the early experiments in inoculating for smallpox. The Dutch traders of Manhattan opened a little shelter in 1658, which afterwards grew into Bellevue, our oldest hospital. For a while, the