Can You Imagine?!  

Nursing in Days Gone By

You don't have to dig very far back in the annuls of nursing history to realize how far we've come...

One of the standards that Dorothea Dix, Civil War Nursing Corps leader, established for her nurses was that they be plain looking and middle-aged.  Recruits consequently named her “Dragon Dix”.   source: www.civilwarhome.com

Pliny the Elder and other medical writers of ancient times chronicled that (ancient) Roman folk medicine embraced the following methods of (supposedly) easing the rigors of childbirth:

• Fumigations with the fat from hyaena loins

• Placing the right foot of a hyaena on the laboring woman

• A drink sprinkled with powdered sow’s dung

• A drink of hedge mustard in tepid wine on an empty stomach

• Placing a canine placenta on the thighs of the laboring woman

source: www.indiana.edu/~ancmed/mid