Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/358

342 A Short History of Nursing with nourishing or nurturing, not merely with tending and comforting and administrating palHa- tive remedies. In its broadest meaning ' ' nursing " stands for the conservation of vital energy, the hoarding and husbanding of human resources, the building and sustaining of health and strength, whether in the sick or well. "Nurture" from the same root carries also the meaning of training and education, so we have in this name of our profession a rather complete picture of what the modern preventive movement stands for. The various words which describe the field of medicine — "phy- sician," "doctor," "surgeon," the word "medi- cine" itself, all emphasize the idea of drugs or remedies or manipulations. They seem to suggest the salvaging of human wreckage and the patching up of broken-down machines, rather than the steady building up and sustaining of life. The term "preventive" is now added to "medicine" to in- dicate the newer idea of conservation or perhaps the incorporation of the "nursing" element in medicine. However that may be, it is significant that the work of "health nursing," as Florence Nightingale called it, preceded the preventive movement in medicine, and there is every indication that nurses will continue to take an increasingly large part in