Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/263

247 Nursing in other Countries 247 menial paid nurse of low status and no education, whose appearance betokened the first entrance of women into the modern labour movement; finally the secular, highly educated and professionally trained nurse on the Nightingale pattern, fit and ready to co-operate with scientific men in modern life-saving movements, gaining with not a little difficulty a complete economic independence, at first intensely individualistic, scornful of all train- ing save her own, then at last learning to unite with all her sisters in one world-wide profession. At least before the war it was possible to find examples of every one of these systems surviving on the European continent. What modifications the war will bring about cannot yet be certainly predicted. The final test of nursing systems must be the welfare of the patient. The welfare of the nurse is soon reflected in that of the patient. Basis of One testifies to the other. The only judgment in comparing claim a nursing system may make for nursing the right to survive is its ability to systems adapt itself to the ever-changing social order. This means ultimate progress, even if experiments have to be made and abandoned as failures. To grow means to live. Generally speaking, the status of nursing in any