Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/196

180 CHAPTER IX EXTENSIONS OF THE MODERN NURSING FIELD IN this chapter we shall consider some of the present tendencies in nursing development. In taking up the new lines of activity today it will be interesting to take a brief survey of their mode of development. The three main branches of nursing are: I. Private duty, or the Three main divisions of continuous care of one patient, usually nursing. jj^ ^-j^g family; II. Hospital service; Private duty III. Visiting nursing. Of these three the first is the oldest, and the basic branch, yet it was the latest to take on organized professional form. While it must have begun with the earliest family groups, it was home care, unskilled, for ages. In all probability it continued to be a purely domes- tic art until well on in the early modem period. We do not know certainly whether the Beguines took private cases, though they did visiting nursing among the poor. It is not evident that the first Sisters of Charity were sent to private patients, l8o