Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/361

The Past and Future 345 the relationship between physicians and nurses is based on mutual respect and confidence and on the frankest and fullest possible co-operation, friction and jealousy largely disappear, and the work goes ahead efficiently and harmoniously. No amount of individual patronage and condescension and no flattering compliments can ever compensate for the loss of this juster and finer relationship, without which there can be no real harmony and no free and loyal co-operation between physicians and nurses, or between men and women anywhere. It lies with nurses quite as much as with medical men to spread this spirit and definitely to work toward a better understanding and relationship. It is of course a mistake to assume that women have been the only active workers in the nursing field — monks, knights, and mendicants. Nursing and and many other groups of men sharing the general with them the toils and achievements, advancement of wo^nen especially of the earlier day. It is, however, perfectly plain, that many of the difficul- ties which nurses have faced in the past, have been due to the fact that most of them were women, labouring under hereditary handicaps, which we have just recently begun to remove. In a paper on the "Evolution of the Trained Nurse," Mrs. Fenwick closes with the statement: "The evolu-