HISTORICAL REVOLUTION OF NURSING:

Period of Intuitive Nursing/Medieval Period/Primitive Era

- It was practiced since prehistoric times among primitive tribes and lasted until the Christian
Era.
- In ancient civilization, nursing was noted to be as old as time. It basically started from
INSTINCT. It is in human nature to help and care for the sick.

● In primitive or ancient times, caring for others was untaught and instinctive.
● Nursing started as an intuitive way of caring for sick or injured members of the family.
● It was performed out of compassion for others, out of the wish to help others.
● A function that belonged to women.
● Viewed as a natural nurturing job for women. (because women’s roles in the past
traditionally were to run the household, taking good care of the children, the sick and
the aged.)
● No caregiving training is evident. (It was all based on experience and observations)

Believes and Practices of Prehistoric Man:

● Primitive men believed that illness was caused by the invasion of the victim’s body of
evil spirits through the use of balck magic or voodoo.
● They believed that the medicine man, Shaman or witch doctor had the power to heal
by using white magic, hypnosis, charms, dances, incantation, purgatives, massage,
fire, water and herbs as a means of driving illness from the victim.
● They also practice “TREPHINING” or drilling a hole in the skull with a rock or stone
without anesthesia as a last resort to drive evil spirits from the body.

Contributions of Ancient Civilization to Medicine and Nursing:

BABYLONIANS Civilizations:
● Hammurabi - first king of Babylonian Empire.
○ Code of Hammurabi - (one of the first written codes of law recorded in history)
○ 1st recording medical practice
○ This code provided laws that included medical practice and recommended
specific doctors for each disease and gave each patient the right to choose
between the use of charms, medications or surgical procedures.
○ FACT: Ancient rulers always blame the physician for poor patient outcomes
and also made regulations to regulate medical professions. REMEMBER that
 during this time medical science was not yet fully developed enough to deal
with most diseases.
●
○ https://extinctdoctorgood.com/2017/12/23/hammurabis-medical-regulation-
code-1750-bc-noble-profession-has-always-been-regulated-cruelly/

Egyptian Civilizations:
● Introduce the art of embalming/preserving (removing the internal organs of the dead
body)
● The brain, lungs, liver, stomach and intestines were removed during the
embalming process. The embalmers left the heart in the body because they believed
the person's intellect and knowledge resided in the heart so it needed to remain with
the body.
● which enhances their knowledge of human anatomy.
● During these times, they had developed the ability to make observations and left a
record of 250 recognized diseases.
● There was no mention of nurses, and hospitals. Slaves and patient’s families are the
one who nurses the sick.
Israel
● Moses - “Father of Sanitation” and wrote in Old Testament which:
○ Emphasized the practice of hospitality to strangers and acts of charity
○ Promulgated laws of control on the spread of communicable disease, laws
governing cleanliness and the ritual of circumcision of the male child on the
8th day after birth
○ Referred to nurses as midwives, wet nurses or child’s nurses whose acts
were compassionate and tender
Period of Apprentice Nursing “The Training Period”
At this time, although people’s knowledge in nursing was developing, there was still
no formal education available.
In that case, this was also the time wherein people will just learn nursing through the
direction of a more experienced nurse.
PERIOD OF ON THE JOB TRAINING:
● Religious orders of the Christian church were responsible for the development of this
kind of nursing. (malaki ang influence ng christianity because during this time
CHRISTIANITY are the ones who brought the caring community together. They
established churches. Organized groups that are being ordered to care for the sick,
poor orphans, slaves prisoners etc.)
● Care was done by crusaders, prisoners and religious orders.
● In this early Christian Era, women began nursing as an expression of Christianity.
● Christianity had a large influence upon nursing, and it was during this time that
nurses first formed themselves into organized groups. Educated and wealthy women
dedicated themselves to caring for the sick and poverty stricken.

Important Personages who dedicated themselves.

● St. Clare - gave nursing care to the sick and the afflicted
- Established her own religious order.
- A rich woman who took vows of poverty, obedient service and chastity.
- Inspired by St. Francis and joined him
● St. Elizabeth of Hungary - a princess who's also known as the "Patroness of
Nursing".
- Daughter of the Hungarian King
- She used her wealth to make the lives of the poor happy and useful
- She built hospitals for the sick and the needy.
- She humbled herself in feeding the sick with her own hands and made
their beds herself.
- She provided for orphans and fed 300 to 900 people daily at her gate.
● St. Catherine of Siena - “the first lady with lamp” “Little Saint”
- She was a hospital nurse, prophetess, researcher and a former society in the
church.
- She pledged her life to service at the age of seven and was referred to as a
little saint.
The Renaissance period, however, was considered the “dark side of nursing”.
Dark period of Nursing
● This extends from the 17th century to the 19th century from the period of reformation
until the US Civil War.
● This period was brought about by revolution and civil war.
● During this period nursing went down to the lowest level.
- Nursing became the work of the least desirable of women.
- Hundreds of hospitals closed.
- Sanitation was very unpleasant and no people go to hospitals unless under
compulsion or if it is their last resort.
- To keep safe, many nurses fled for their lives.
- There were no provision for the sick, no one cared for the sick
- In response, nursing became the work of women whose intention is mostly to
take bribes from patients, steal food from patients and use alcohol as
tranquilizer. That is why, this was the time where people looked at nurses with
very low dignity.
● During this period, Pastor Theodore Fliedner and Frederika Fliedner, established the
1st training school for nurses, The Kaiserswerth Institute for Deaconesses in
Germany. They recognized the role of women in taking care of the sick.
● And one of the students of this training school is Florence Nightingale, where she
received her 3 month course of studying in nursing.

Because no formal education in the care of the sick was available, the earliest nurses
learned the art through oral traditions passed through the generations. Many times
knowledge was simply gained through the process of trial and error. By the sixteenth
century, nurses were known as people who wait upon or tend to the sick.

It was not until the nineteenth century that the definition of nursing was broadened to include
those trained to tend to the sick and carry out duties under the direction of a physician.
Holder states that most people associate the true beginning of nursing with Florence
Nightingale in the 19th century.
Period of Educated Nursing
This period was formed due to the result of what happened during the war. It was
also the increase of educational opportunities offered to women. With this, the dignity of
nurses was again brought back.

The development of nursing during this period was strongly influenced by:
○ Trends resulting from wars - Crimean, civil war
○ An arousal of social consciousness
○ Emancipation of women - (freeing someone from slavery)
○ Increased educational opportunities for women.

● Florence Nightingale was asked by Sir Sidney Herbert of the British War Department
to recruit female nurses to provide care for the sick and injured in the Crimean War
● This period began on June 15, 1860 when the Florence Nightingale School of
Nursing opened at St. Thomas Hospital in London.
● In 1860, The Nightingale Training School of Nurses opened at St. Thomas Hospital in
London.
○ The school served as a model for other training schools. Its graduates
traveled to other countries to manage hospitals and institute nurse-training
programs.
○ Nightingale's focus vision of the nursing Nightingale system was more on
developing the profession within hospitals. Nurses should be taught in
hospitals associated with medical schools and that the curriculum should
include both theory and practice.
○ It was the 1st school of nursing that provided both theory-based knowledge
and clinical skill building.
● Nursing evolved as an art and science
○ SCIENCE: Nursing is a body of scientific knowledge using empirics
○ ART:
● Formal nursing education and nursing service began.

Florence Nightingale:
● “Mother of Modern Nursing”, “Founder of Modern Nursing”
● Born May 12 1800 in Florence, Italy
 ● At age of 31, she entered the Deaconesses School in spite of her family’s resistance
to her ambition. She became a nurse over the objections of society and her family
because of her love to serve and care for the people in need.
● Known as the “Lady with the Lamp” because of her habit of making rounds at night to
check on the injured and sickened soldiers during the Crimean war.
● Nightingale's school was the first of its kind to provide both theory-based knowledge
as well as clinical skill building.
● She upgraded the practice of nursing and made nursing an honorable profession for
gentlewomen.

Period of Contemporary Nursing/20th Century

● This covers the period after WWII up to the present, the 21st Century.
● Training and education