ABSTRACT
In 1933 the Danish nurse Elna Hjort-Lorenzen, a central board member of the Danish Council of Nurses and a declared Marxist, wrote about nurses’ political and social tasks. Hjort-Lorenzen claimed that it is not to prevent distress and poverty that the working classes are offered hospitals and care for the poor and needy among them; rather, it is a tool to maintain order in society. Added to this, working-class people fill up hospitals and sanatoria due to the degraded social conditions they encounter, namely crowded and unhealthy housing, insufficient food and poor hygiene. Moreover, for Hjort-Lorenzen, nurses are without doubt part of the exploited working class; despite nurses’ efforts to define nursing as a vocation and a religious offering, their position in society is that of the proletariat. Hjort-Lorenzen continued:
Capitalist society requires that hospitals be staffed in the least expensive way. The workforce must be fully utilized; it has therefore been very beneficial for the Bourgeoisie to let the nurses maintain the nuns’ perception of work as a deed of mercy. In this way nurses could be exploited more than other workers.
