Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/329

313 Nursing in the World War 313 It cannot be gainsaid, even by those who most abhor war, that, as far back as we can see, both the medical and nursing arts have been Effect of greatly stimulated, especially on the war on technical or efficiency side, by desperate nursing wars. The wars of the Trojans and the Romans saw surgery and surgical instruments improved, and at least a recognition of the need of nursing in the system of military ward orderlies. The wars of the crusades developed the hospital organiza- tion of the Knights Hospitallers, from which civil- ian hospitals later took over their regulations, and in the Napoleonic wars the Sisters of Charity, for the first time in history, so far as w& know, gave the world a picture of trained and uniformed pro- fessional women nurses in the midst of an army on the battlefield. Their example was followed by the German Deaconesses, who were wont to follow the lines of armies. Miss Nightingale met her opportunity to create the modern nursing order, the opportunity she had hitherto sought in vain, in the Crimean War. Our first American training schools of full and com- pleted plan were the work of women who had served through the Civil War. It was the battle of Solferino which inspired the founder of the Red Cross, Henri Dunant. All this professional pro-