Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/234

218 2i8 A Short History of Nursing tal industrial hygiene must aim at the removal of all children from gainful employment (this is closely connected with public school nursing work), the elimination from all industries of overwork and overstrain, which are the root-causes of many ill- nesses (as set forth unanswerably by Josephine Goldmark in her thorough presentation of the testimony on the part played by fatigue in induc- ing disease), and protection against industrial poisons. Then, too, the approach of systematized compulsory health insurance under state and federal laws indicates the near need of enlarged staffs of industrial nurses. Efforts to meet the demands for wider equipment on such lines were being made by 1910 in nurses' settlements and visiting nurse groups. In 191 9 the first organized courses for nurses wishing to fit themselves for industrial work were launched in connection with Harvard University and Teachers College. So great is the demand that in many places untrained attendants are being used, nurses not being available. In the work of teaching and helping the children in schools for the blind throughout the country, philanthropists came to realize that many of the children need not have been blind, had they been properly cared for at birth, and out of this re- I