Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/129

The Dark Period in Nursing 113 They set a high standard wherever they went, and began the work of rescuing nursing from the depths into which it had fallen. They were the pioneers of English reform, and had some trained women ready to go with Miss Nightingale to the Crimea. Their limitations in developing hospital work widely were the result of the antiquated formula they had adopted for their organized bodies. A freer form was necessary, and this was to be Miss Nightingale's mission. Medicine and surgery were not well advanced in the first half of the nineteenth century. The prevailing explanation of disease was Medicine that it developed spontaneously. The and surgery germ theory was not yet formulated, 'early though Pallanzani and other Italian nineteenth scientists had begun in the eighteenth century century to study microscopic forms of life in water and in putrefying materials. Infection and con- tagion were not understood, and orthodox medical opinion ignored the insurgents who offered new ideas. Oliver Wendell Holmes's illuminating article proving the facts as to puerperal fever had little immediate effect. Still worse was the treat- ment given to Semmelweiss (i8 18-1865), who ap- plied his belief in the theory of infection in his work in the Vienna Maternity hospitals with r