Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/347

The Past and Future 331 It is a significant picture and one which we need to hold in our memory, not only to show us the long and difficult path by which we have come, but to remind us that continuous progress is by no means an invariable rule in nursing any more than in other human institutions, and that there is always the danger of reaction when the nursing spirit grows dim and the forces which make for progress weaken and fail. The nursing of the earlier day represents the triumph of the nursing spirit, rather than any marked development of the science and art of nursing. The amount of menfoTnl^s- progress which was achieved is all the * sci- 111, . , ence and art more remarkable when we consider that the nurses of the past worked almost wholly in the dark, with only the faintest glimmerings of scientific knowledge to guide them and with only their own crude experience to teach them the highly difficult and delicate art which we now know nursing to be. Their blind, and often tragic- ally futile efforts are dramatically pictured in "A Pageant and Masque of the Evolution of Trained Nursing" prepared by Mrs. Bedford Fen wick and Miss M. MoUett. A brief extract only is given. The Spirit of Nursing is speaking — "I wept for pity and I strove to ease where I might not mend ;