Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/357

341 The Past and Future 341 achievements of modern medical science. This has not always been fully recognized by the public or by the medical profession, whole volumes hav- ing been written on this subject without so much as a word about the nurse's contributions to the miracles of surgery or the triumphs over infectious disease. Nurses have as a rule been rather too modest and self-effacing and they have not always themselves been fully conscious of the part their profession was playing in this great modern war- fare against disease. It is therefore not perhaps surprising that physicians have sometimes failed to recognize their contribution or to see it except as a by-product of their own work. There are many indications, however, of a fairer and more generous attitude on the part of progressive medical men of the present day, and there is little doubt that if nurses will honour their own work and hold it high, it will soon win complete recog- nition not only from physicians but from the gen- eral public. The rapid development of the public health movement is certain to bring further changes in the relations of these two professions. Funda- mentally this movement is entirely in line with the original and basic conception of nursing, which as the name itself implies, is concerned primarily