I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. —“THE FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PLEDGE” FOR MUCH OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, HOSPITAL nursing was typically handled by a bunch of remarkably unqualified women. In New York City, for example, the wards of Bellevue were staffed by former inmates of the Blackwell’s Island workhouse—women, generally arrested for drunkenness or prostitution, who were paroled on the condition that they serve a stint as nurses. Needless to say, the quality of care they offered the patients left a lot to be desired, particularly since many of them were illiterate and unable to read the directions on medicine bottles—a circumstance that often produced disastrous results. The situation was no less bleak in Boston. As early as 1850, a sanitary commission appointed by the Massachusetts State Legislature recommended “that institutions be formed to educate and qualify females to be nurses of the sick.”
