Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/188

172 A nursing literature also grew up, and textbooks on many subjects once treated of only by medical men were very often prepared by nurses, for use in nursing schools and in various branches of nursing work.

The pioneer training school for coloured nurses which was initiated and wholly controlled by coloured people was the Provident hospital in Chicago. Many other excellent institutions now train coloured nurses and give coloured physicians the advantages they need which are too often denied to them elsewhere. The coloured nurses of the country formed a national association in 1908, and this society sent delegates to the International Congress of Nurses in 1912. The negro nurses of our country are so serious and earnest, and reflect such credit upon themselves and their calling, that this professional separation from white nurses is most regrettable, especially as the American Nurses' Association has never had any race question and has for years had alumnae associations of coloured nurses in membership. And yet we know that in many intangible ways coloured nurses have been made to feel that they have special problems. These should be ours as well as theirs.