ABSTRACT
Although the nineteenth-century nursing reforms are associated with Miss Nightingale, the circumstances produced the leader and the time was ripe. Towards the end of the century a number of factors came together to give the concept of ‘trained nursing’ an impetus undreamt of by the mid-century reformers. First, there were the medical advances stemming from the work of men like Joseph Lister (1827–1912) and Louis Pasteur (1822–1895); antiseptic surgery required a more intelligent and conscientious type-of nurse, whilst the introduction of anaesthesia in the 1840s by James Simpson (1811–70) called for a more observant one; but above all there were the effects of the identification of the pathological bacteria which followed hard on Koch’s discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882. Within a matter of 40 years there was a new public expectation of what medicine could do—and what it would do in the future. For the first time in history people began to see medicine as scientific, and therefore the new image of the hospital nurse was associated with doctors, science and cure. From now on nursing was to become eclectic, often taking over duties and techniques, and sometimes acquiring the knowledge and skill once considered the prerogative of other professions and callings.
