Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/302

286 A Short History of Nursing laid the cornerstone by fixing a one-year training in hospital. As many medical men had been busily training "nurses" in their offices by a six weeks' course, this was a decided advance, though the act was not compulsory. The Society founded a journal and adopted the name and badge of the extinct Lazarus order. This was the first national society to take up seriously the question of over- strain and pathological fatigue, a crusade urgently called for in a country where twenty-four hour duty was still to be found. When the war broke out the German Nurses' Association had become important enough to be able to gain government recognition in the sharing of war nursing under the Red Cross. The authentic instances of cruelty shown to prisoners of war by German women wearing the nurses' uniform and Red Cross badge have reflected unjustly, we consider, on the whole nursing profes- sion of Germany. We believe that some day it will be proved that such atrocities were not committed by trained and professional nurses, but by lay workers in uniform who were probably of military families. Everyone wore a uniform during the war, as we know, and in other countries as well as Germany the volunteer nurse could not always be distinguished by her dress from the professional.