Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/233

217 Extensions of Nursing Field 217 effective application, medical supervision, sanitary- inspection, and nursing aid. This opens a vast new field requiring special training. Nurses were appointed as early as the 1890's by intelligent employers, to guard the health of operatives in shops, department stores, and factories. In this sphere the nurse watched the employees (at first, usually, girls or women, but now men as well), taught them personal hygiene, advised them how to choose nutritious foods, carried out First Aid procedure, and visited them in their homes when ill. By such work preventible illness was reduced to a very creditable minimum. In 1909 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Corn- pany, acting on a suggestion made by Lillian Wald, and in co-operation with the Henry Street settle- ment, began employing nurses on a wide scale to visit its policy holders who were wage-earners. This kind of service later grew to nation-wide proportions, and, in a study of one million policy holders, it was estimated that the work of the nurses had, in five years' time, reduced the mor- tality by a considerable percentage. Nurses have now been called into many parts of the world of industry, — chiefly, however, as yet, into those parts which were already the more favoured or intelligently conducted. Fundamen-