Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/324

3o8 A Short History of Nursing also had a definite place in hospitals and private work in Russia. No strictly modern system of Countries training had been founded up to the of elemen- outbreak of the World War, but some tary but , . i i • indigenous y^^^S progressive women had m- nursing dividually sought hospital work and had systems taken steps to learn modern methods. Medical science in those countries was well ad- vanced, and Russian women, as is well known, have always been on terms of entire equality with men, intellectually and in practical affairs. Russian women have long specialized in medicine, and there was, also, in many of the larger and better Russian hospitals, a class of women nurses of a superior kind who were, indeed, rather more like medical assist- ants in the way they were taught and in the duties they performed. These women correspond most nearly to our trained nurses. In general, the nurs- ing in Russian hospitals has been performed by paid attendants, women and men of no special training, and, in recent times by Red Cross nurses, called Sisters of Mercy who were often very capable and became highly experienced. The International Council of Nurses was founded in 1899, when the meeting of the Inter- national Council of Women in London, in the summer of that year, brought together a little