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chapter 15 | Nursing Yesterday and Today 243 CikguOnline
Early Health-Care Reform at Miss Crittenden’s English and French Boarding
and Day School for Young Ladies and Little Girls.
Nightingale’s work marked the beginning of mod-
Her relatives were physicians and had a tremen-
ern military nursing. As a result of her documenta-
dous influence on her. They encouraged her to
tion of the conditions in Crimea and the nurses’
choose nursing as a career.
efforts to improve them, reforms were undertaken.
Wald attended the New York Hospital School
Nightingale’s statistics were so accurate and
of Nursing. After graduation, she worked as a nurse
clearly reported that she was elected a member of
in the New York Juvenile Asylum. She felt a need
the British Statistical Society, the first woman to
for more medically oriented knowledge, so she
hold this position. At their conference in 1860, she
entered Women’s Medical College in New York.
presented a paper entitled, “Miss Nightingale’s
Scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics.” Before
Turning Point
this paper was written, each hospital had used its
During this time, Wald and a colleague,
own names and classification systems for diseases.
Mary Brewster, were asked to go to New York’s
Nightingale’s opinions on improving health care
Lower East Side to give a lecture to immigrant
were solicited constantly. This led to another
mothers on caring for the sick. Wald and Brewster
publication, “Notes on Hospitals.”
were shocked by what they discovered there.
For more than 40 years, Nightingale played an
While showing a group of mothers how to
influential part in most of the important health-
make a bed, a child came up to Wald and asked for
care reforms of her time. At the turn of the 20th
help. The boy took her to a squalid tenement
century, however, her energies had waned, and she
apartment where nine poorly nourished people
spent most of the next 10 years confined to her
were living in two rooms. A woman lay on a bed.
home on South Street in London. She died in her
Although she was seriously ill, it was apparent that
sleep on August 13, 1910.
no one had attended to her needs for several days
Nightingale’s Contributions (Kalisch & Kalisch, 2004). Miss Crittenden’s
Nightingale is believed to have been in error in only School had not prepared Wald for this, but she
two areas. First, she did not believe in or appreciate went right to work. She bathed the woman,
the significance of the germ theory of infection, washed and changed the bedclothes, sent for a
although her insistence on fresh air, physical physician, and cleaned the room.
hygiene,and environmental cleanliness certainly did This incident was a turning point in her life.
a great deal to decrease the transmission of infec- Wald left medical school and began a career as an
tious diseases. Second, she did not support a central advocate and helper of the poor and sick, joined by
registry or testing for nurses similar to what was in Brewster. They soon found that there were thou-
place for physicians. She was convinced that this sands of cases similar to the first in just one small
would undermine the profession and that a letter of neighborhood.
recommendation from the school matron was suffi-
The Visiting Nurses
cient to attest to the skill and character of the nurse.
Florence Nightingale was a woman of vision Wald and Brewster established a settlement house
and determination. Her strong belief in herself and in 1893 in a rented tenement apartment in a poor
her abilities allowed her to pursue and achieve her section of New York’s Lower East Side.To be clos-
goals. She was a political activist and a revolution- er to their clients, they gave up their comfortable
ary in her time. Her accomplishments went beyond living quarters and moved into a smaller, upper-
the scope of nursing and nursing education, affect- floor apartment there.
ing all aspects of health care and social reform. It did not take long for the women to build up a
nursing practice. At first, they had to seek out the
Lillian Wald sick, but within weeks calls came to them by the
hundreds. The people of the neighborhood trusted
Background them and relied on them for help. Gradually, the
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1867, Lillian Wald two developed a reputation among the physicians
moved to Rochester, New York, where she spent and hospitals in the area, and requests to see clients
most of her childhood. She received her education came from these sources as well.