I am starting a new career…

What do I know about it’s

antecedents?

What are the issues in Nursing?

What are the various routes

of educational preparation

for a career in Nursing?

How has Nursing changed with the changes in the ‘Health Care Delivery’ system?

Is Nursing a vocation or a

profession?

What resulted in Nursing offering the opportunities and challenges today?

Who are those who made

significant contributions to

Nursing?

…Here lies the future of my education and my profession

HISTORY,in its broadest sense, is the totality of all past events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to

the known past.

OBJECTIVES • Summarize the health care practices & developments of early civilizations

• Analyze how the 3 historical images of the nurse influenced the development of nursing as a profession

• Examine the ‘Dark Age of Nursing” on the development of nursing profession

• Discuss the contributions of ‘Florence Nightingale and it’s development

• Examine the impact of war on the development of nursing Education

• Discuss the early development of nursing schools

• Delineate the characteristics of early nursing programme

• Identify the first organizations created by and for nurses and discuss their purposes

DISCUSSION

• Pre Christian Era

• Early Christian Era (1 AD – 500 AD)

• Medieval Era (500 AD – 1500 AD)

• Modern Era (1500 – 1800 AD)

• Modern Nursing

• Nursing Today

IPRE-CHRISTIAN ERA

Influence of ancient cultural practices on health care

(The ‘folk image’ of the nurse)

EVOLUTION OF NURSING

• As an instinctive response to the desire to keep healthy, the sick

• The first nurse – the first mother• Responsibility – nurturing children,

care of the elderly and the sick • Education – Through trial & error and

information sharing, intuition• Religions – fatalistic in their outlook

on illness• Superstition & magic

PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES

• Nomadic• Solidarity for mutual protection• Belief in the power of Gods/ evil spirits• Black and white magic• Ingenious techniques of health practices• Med & Surg treatments – Massage, fomentation, trephining, bone setting, amputation, hot and cold baths.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

• By river Nile. Healthiest & most advanced• Priest physicians - Belief in evil spirits• Imhotep – A surgeon, architect, priest, scribe, magician)• A system of community planning (hygiene, sanitation,

embalming, dentistry)• Records preserved in papyrus (diseases, drugs, birth

control)• Women assisted ‘priest- physician’ as priestess/ midwives/ wet-nurses• Dissection – forbidden. • Hence no further progress

GREEK CIVILIZATION• Apollo (son of God) – God of health• Asculapus (son of Apollo) – God of healing• Epigone – (Asculapus’ wife) – The soother• Hygeia – (daughter of Apollo) – Goddess of health• Temples – became social, intellectual and medical centers• 400 BC – Hippocrates – Father of medicine - Brought out medicine from magic to science - Stressed on equilibrium of body, mind & environment - Diagnosis, fresh air, cleanliness, fresh air, music & work - Hippocratic oath• Aristotle – differentiated arteries from vein

ROMAN CIVILIZATION

• Medical advances borrowed from Greece after they conquered it

• Clung to superstitions• Had good hygiene and sanitation • Made drainage systems, drinking water

aqueducts, public baths, hospitals (for soldiers and slaves)

• Men & women of good character did nursing• Two classes – Patricians - Plebicians

CHINESE CIVILIZATION

• By the Yellow river• Confucius – Patriarchal role

- Importance to rule of etiquette- Value of family as a unit- Women inferior to men

• ‘Yang’ & ‘Yin’ – Active (male) & passive (female) force• 2000 BC – Dissection done, circulation, pulse, elaborate materia medica,

importance to hygiene• Rule of physical exam – ‘Look, listen, ask and feel’• Baths to reduce fever, blood- letting for evil spirits• 1000 BC - Sen Lung (Father of medicine), used veg and animal drugs,

vaccination, physiotherapy, treated syphilis and gonorrhea• 1200 BC - Liver diet for anemia, Seaweed for thyroid disorders• Lay people still believed in evil spirits entering into care givers – Hence

nursing was impossible

HEBREW CIVILIZATION

• Moses – A divinely motivated servant of God

• ‘Mosaic code’- Isolation, hygiene, rest & sleep, hrs of work, disposal of excreta, disinfection, regulations to check animals before slaughtering/ eating

• Bible – ‘Do not eat meat past the 3rd day’

• King gave health power to ‘priest physician’

• Priest physician – took the role of health inspector

• ‘Houses of Hospitality’ – the fore runners of inns, hotels, hospitals.

INDIAN CIVILIZATION

First civilizations were highly developed…• 1500 BC - Vedic age. Brahmanism/ Hinduism

(worship of eternal spirit Brahma) with sub castes• Ayurveda (Veda of longevity) – explains hygiene,

disease prevention, major/ minor surgery, children’s disease, inoculation, materia medica, disease of CNS & GUS

• 1400 BC- Sushruta- ‘Father of Surgery’ in India. Charaka wrote ‘Internal medicine’

…………………..>>>>

..INDIAN CIVILIZATION..

• 500 BC – Siddhartha Gautama discarded caste system. Hygiene, sanitation, care of women and children, disease prevention.

• King Ashoka (272 – 236 BC) - Public hospitals with male nurses and some older women, hospitals for animals. Universities (monasteries) of Taxila & Nalanda (Bihar)

• Nurses should have 3 qualities – high standards, skills and trustworthiness

…INDIAN CIVILIZATION

• 1 AD – Superstition & magic replaced by more up-to-date practice.

• But medicine remained in the hands of priest physician, who refused to touch blood and pathological tissue

• 1000 AD- Brahmin influences gained strength and re-established itself. Buddhism declined. Brahmins were priest physicians

• Rigid Hindu caste system. No dissection. Superstition and magic replaced practice of medicine

• 1200 AD – Mohammedans invaded- Accelerated the decline of medicine