Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/202

186 1 86 A Short History of Nursing stricted quarters, or only needs a nurse part of the time. The second is office nursing which means assisting a physician with his cases and combining with this sometimes a certain amount of laboratory or clerical work. If modern private duty only were in question it should be placed after hospital nursing in point of Hospital time. We place hospital service second nursing jj^ because of the primal character of the home care of the sick from which private duty developed. Hospital care is probably much older than visiting nursing, for the visitation of the sick in ancient times can hardly be called nursing in the strict sense, whereas inns or hostels for the reception of sick persons are, as we have seen, of great antiquity. In the early hospitals of the Christian era, the duties of nurses included a great deal of house- keeping and administrative work; — the care and management of kitchens, linen-rooms, drug-rooms, and other supply departments, as well as the actual cooking, scrubbing, laundry work, and other menial labour. The further organization of hos- pitals led to many fairly distinct departments, each with its special head. The knights-hospi- tallers introduced a military formalism, and placed experienced persons in administrative positions,