Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/375

The Past and Future 359 where nurses have gone to the ends of the earth to fight a typhus epidemic or where they have con- stantly braved the submarine zones in hospital ships, in many cases giving their lives that fight- ing men might be saved. Nurses have certainly shown abundantly both in war and peace that they are good patriots and good soldiers, ready to answer promptly the call of duty and to subordinate their own personal in- terest to the general good. There are very few slackers or shirkers among nurses. When they are assigned to a post of duty they can usually be de- pended on to stick to it, until they are relieved, no matter what personal dangers or discomforts may be involved. They have walked so long with danger and death in the sick-room as well as on the fields of battle, in plague-stricken countries, in the slums of great cities, and far out on the fron- tiers of civilization, that they have learned to face these terrors with courage and indeed to share the delight of all good fighters in a real battle with those ancient enemies. The strongest military influence came quite recently through the ' ' soldier nurse ' ' of the Crimea. It was at this time that our modern system of hospital discipline was adopted largely from the army, and many of our hospital observances and