Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/295

279 Nursing in other Countries 279 but these women are not placed in army hospitals. During the recent war Danish nurses volunteered, and were called upon, in great numbers, serving in almost all the warring countries. Sweden has a history of Deaconess orders doing pioneer work and remaking nursing conditions over the country. Many such orders •11 • ^ • rr^i Sweden are still active and important. The Red Cross then made a profound impression and is still, probably, the foremost influence in Swedish nursing. Red Cross nursing standards are at their best in the Scandinavian countries, because of the fine character of the women who belong to it, and also because, in the beginning, the Red Cross of Sweden sent Emmy Rappe to St. Thomas's to prepare herself for the post of Red Cross Ma- tron. Miss Nightingale was deeply interested in this selection, for she had earlier offered to place a Swedish probationer in the Nightingale school. An important hospital in Stockholm, the Sophia- hemmet, in which the Queen of Denmark inter- ested herself greatly, also sent its first Matron to be trained in England. This has a thoroughly modem and very admirable training school. Although the Swedish nurses are all members of their Red Cross or deaconess orders, or of the Sophiahemmet, they yet were free to form a na-