Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/168

152 152 A Short History of Nursing some little record, far too little indeed, has been made of the work of the best known women who served during that time. The women who had worked on the Sanitary Commission had developed abilities of a high order and had gained a national breadth of Women view. In every state they went home tions for the sick and poor. A group of such women, led by Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler, formed the New York State Charities Aid Association, and within this was formed in New York City a section called the Bellevue Hospital Visiting Committee. It consisted of fifty-three women, a chosen group, whose chairman was Mrs. Joseph Hobson. The committee visited the wards as the Dames de Charite had done in Vincent de Paul's day, and from what they thus learned grew the determination to reorganize nursing. Incredible conditions were described in Mrs. Hobson's first report. Food for the convalescent patients was dumped on the bare wooden table (no dishes), to be picked up in the fingers; the beds were filthy and swarming with vermin; the laundry was, at one time, staffed by one old man, who turn from war work to reform at home to take up some kind of public ser- vice, and their attention was first given to public charities and institu-