Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/356

340 340 A Short History of Nursing tinct art of nursing. In this field it is she and not the physician who is the expert. Like the mother in the home the nurse determines to a large extent the atmosphere surrounding the sick and looks after the multitudinous details on which health and comfort so greatly depend. These are services to the patient and not to the physician as such. In the same way, the nurse's functions in teaching, in household management, and in social service are her own and are not derived from medicine. Although there is a fairly clear-cut division of functions between physicians and nurses, there is always a certain interchange of duties, and in recent years particularly, a tendency to pass over to nurses some of the duties which formerly be- longed strictly to medical men. Furthermore the whole tendency in the treatment of disease is to throw more stress on nutrition and hygiene and on physical and mental modes of treatment, thus adding more and more to the already heavy re- sponsibilities of the nurse, and making the physi- cian more dependent on her. Indeed it is quite fair to say that the nursing profession at the present day is not any more dependent on medicine than medicine is on nursing. It should be clearly understood, also, that the nurse has had a very substantial share in the