Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/208

192 192 A Short History of Nursing But in every country, probably, with some rare exceptions, the trained nurse is still shut out of Prison and prisons proper. English nurses, workhouse notably Beatrice Kent, have made nursing eloquent public appeals on the need of nurses in prisons, and have gained an entrance into a women's prison, as noted in the story of England. In this country, while some prisons have separate infirmaries with trained nurses in charge, none, we believe, have admitted nurses on sanitary or health-conserving missions within the cell-blocks themselves. These are usually connected with hospitals, but are sometimes established as separate institutions, Dispensaries to help patients who are able to remain and clmics home yet need treatment and obser- vation. (Examples, the Boston Dispensary and the Vanderbilt Clinic in New York.) The origin of modern dispensaries may be found in a very familiar dispute between medical men and apothe- caries in English seventeenth century history. Free treatment for the poor had not yet been or- ganized professionally, and physicians complained that apothecaries prescribed and gave medicines. The apothecaries replied that the poor could not afford physicians' fees. The physicians met the economic necessity, and passed a formal resolution