Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/297

281 The Motherhouse brought about a general uplift in hospital nursing and work among the poor. When the Surgical hospital in Helsingfors was opened in 1888, as one of the University Clinics, the English system was introduced. A young woman of earnest and lovely character, Anna Broms, who had been trained in Sweden and at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, was placed in the surgical hospital as Matron by Dr. F. Saltzmann, who was exceptionally liberal. Miss Broms founded her work, but lost her life after a couple of years' strenuous activity. Sophie Mannerheim, the next Matron, had been trained at St. Thomas's, and under her hand the training school was enlarged to care for all the hospitals belonging to the university. Two Finnish nurses, Ellen Nylander and Hjordis Eklund, after having studied at Teachers College, New York, have returned to Finland to assist in building up this work. This, the largest training school in Finland, had before the war about fifty pupils, and was conducted on advanced lines. A preliminary course for probationers had been opened in 1906 on the model of that at the London hospital. The three years' course has been established in Finland.

Finnish nurses have a national association which does some unusual things. It maintains the pre-