Nursing is a profession that has been an integral part of human society for thousands of years. It is the practice of caring for the sick, injured, or vulnerable and promoting health and well-being. Nursing has evolved over time to become a highly respected profession that requires specialized knowledge and skills. In this article, we will explore the history of nursing and its etymology.

Etymology of Nursing

The word “nurse” comes from the Latin word “nutrire,” which means to nourish. The term “nurse” has been used to describe women who provide care for others since ancient times. In ancient Rome, nurses were often slaves or women from lower social classes who were tasked with caring for sick and injured individuals. The word “nurse” was also used in the Middle Ages to refer to wet nurses, women who breastfed infants that were not their own.

The modern meaning of the word “nurse” began to take shape in the 19th century when nursing began to be recognized as a profession. The first nursing school was established in 1860 by Florence Nightingale, who is considered the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War revolutionized nursing and set the standard for nursing education and practice.

History of Nursing

Nursing has a long and varied history that dates back to ancient times. In many early societies, nursing was seen as a woman’s role and was often performed by midwives, priestesses, or other women in the community.

In ancient Egypt, nursing was a highly respected profession that was often performed by men. The goddess Isis was considered the patroness of nursing, and many nurses wore her symbol, the horned viper, on their clothing.

In ancient Greece, nursing was also considered a respected profession. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recognized the importance of nursing and wrote about the role of nurses in caring for the sick.

During the Middle Ages, nursing was primarily performed by religious orders, such as nuns and monks. These orders established hospitals and provided care for the sick and injured.

The 19th century saw a significant shift in the way nursing was practiced and perceived. Florence Nightingale, a British nurse, revolutionized nursing by emphasizing the importance of cleanliness, hygiene, and patient care. She established the first nursing school and wrote extensively on the subject of nursing.

During World War I, nursing played a crucial role in caring for wounded soldiers. Nurses worked in field hospitals and on the front lines, often in dangerous and difficult conditions.

In the 20th century, nursing continued to evolve as medical technology advanced. Nurses began to specialize in different areas, such as pediatrics, oncology, and critical care. Today, nursing is a highly respected profession that requires specialized knowledge and skills.

Conclusion

Nursing is a profession that has evolved over time to become an integral part of modern healthcare. From its roots in ancient societies to the establishment of the first nursing school by Florence Nightingale, nursing has a rich and varied history. Today, nurses are essential members of healthcare teams and play a vital role in caring for the sick and injured. The etymology of the word “nurse” reflects the fundamental role of nursing in nourishing and caring for others.

The heart is the hollow muscular organ located behind the sternum and between the lungs; its rhythmic contractions move the blood through the body. In all humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart has 4 chambers while in fishes it is divided into two chambers.

Did you know that heart-related diseases or CVD account for 32% of all human deaths around the globe as of 2015? Isn’t that scary? Here is a list of 20 Amazing Fun Facts about Heart, check it out!

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#1 Xenographic transplants involve taking an organ from an animal and using it in a human being – a chimpanzee heart was transplanted into a man in Mississippi, the USA in 1964, but the patient died two hours later.

#2 Your right lung is larger than your left – this is because the left lung needs to make room for your heart. Did you know Your heart beats about 35 million times a year?

#3 The pressure created by your heart can squirt blood almost ten meters.

#4 The blue whale has the slowest heartbeat of any animal – it only beats four to eight times a minute.

#5 The heart is the only muscle that doesn’t take its signal from the nervous system – it has its own stimulator in the right atrium.

#6 The larvae of the pork tapeworm, hatched from eggs eaten in infected pork, can travel around the body and live in the brain, eyes, heart, or muscles.

#7 A giraffe has special valves in its arteries so that its blood can reach up to its head. Without them, it would need a heart as big as its whole body!

#8 About 70 milliliters (around 2.5 fluid ounces) of blood are spurted out of your heart with each beat.

#9 Your heart pumps around 182 million liters (48 million gallons) of blood in your lifetime – with an endless supply of blood, it could fill a swimming pool in less than a month!

#10 Nuttall’s poorwill is an American bird that hibernates in the winter, hiding in a crack in a rock. During this time, it uses only a thirtieth of the energy it uses in the summer and its heartbeat becomes so faint that it can’t be felt.

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#11 When you sneeze, all your body functions stop – even your heart stops beating. A very long sneezing fit can cause a heart attack.

#12 Newts can re-grow body parts that are lost or damaged, including legs, eyes, and even hearts. Scientists who have studied how they do this think they might be able to persuade human bodies to do the same.

Newt

#13 In Vietnam, cobra hearts are a common snack. They can be eaten raw, even still beating, with a small glass of cobra blood or dropped into a glass of rice wine. The kidney is often included as an extra titbit.

#14 The Scottish dish haggis is made by cutting up the heart, lungs, liver, and small intestine of a calf or sheep and cooking it with suet, oatmeal, onions, and herbs in the animal’s stomach.

#15 During heart surgery in 1970, a patient with hemophilia (an inherited condition which stops the blood clotting) needed 1,080 liters of blood – nearly 15 baths full – as he kept bleeding.

#16 The poet Shelley drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822. His body was washed up, half-eaten by fish, and cremated on the beach by his friends. One of them cut his heart from the burnt body and gave it to Shelley’s wife who kept it all her life.

#17 The glass frog is lime green but has a completely transparent stomach. It’s possible to see the blood vessels, the heart, and even check whether it’s eaten recently or might like a snack.

Glass Frog

#18 People who killed themselves used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through their heart. It was thought that they couldn’t go to heaven, and the cross-roads would confuse their ghost so that it couldn’t find the way home to haunt anyone.

#19 A robotic caterpillar controlled by a joystick can be inserted through a small hole in the chest, and crawl over a person’s heart to inject drugs or install implants to heal any damage. Is it nanotechnology?

#20 Apart from the heart, an Egyptian mummy doesn’t have any internal organs left inside the body. The others were removed and put into separate canopic jars that were buried with it. You can continue reading 10 More interesting facts about the Human Digestive System.

Early scientists were not interested in any theories of evolution or not even aware of such concepts. At first, they were even reluctant to accept the idea that some animals had become extinct. According to the Bible, even when a great flood covered the Earth, Noah had managed to save a male and female of all species to ensure that no animal would become extinct. When the first fossils of unknown animals were discovered, it was believed that these animals still existed in some unexplored regions of the Earth.

However, the discovery of fossils of giant animals like the mastodon shook this belief, as it was unlikely that there were unexplored regions large enough to hide such animals. French scientists were the first to accept that these giant animals might have roamed the Earth thousands of years ago, and become extinct due to a variety of causes. Slowly, this idea came to be accepted worldwide. Scientists began their work on evolution theories, and Lamarck was first among them. Later among all these evolution theories, Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin became popular and most accepted to date by the scientific community.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck

Jean Baptiste Lamarck was a French scientist who developed a theory of evolution at the beginning of the 19th century. His theory involved two ideas. The first was the law of use and disuse, which stated that a characteristic which is used more and more by an organism becomes bigger and stronger, and one that is not used, eventually disappears. The second law was the law of inheritance of acquired characteristics. It stated that any feature of an organism that is improved through use is passed to its offspring.

However, Lamarck’s theory cannot account for all the observations made about life on Earth. For instance, his theory would predict that all organisms gradually become complex, and simple organisms disappear. But we know that this is not the case, and those simple organisms still exist. So today, Lamarck’s theory of evolution is largely ignored.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck believed that all bodies had ‘subtle fluids’. These were weightless fluids pervading all space and bodies. Two good examples of eighteenth-century subtle fluids were electricity and heat. Lamarck believed that subtle fluids were responsible for both movement and change.

For example, he pointed out that snails have poor vision because feelers on their head acted as their eyes. According to him, the ancestors of snails did not have feelers. They groped about with their heads to find their way around. This groping sent subtle fluids to the front of the head, and the constant presence of moving subtle fluids eventually brought about the development of feelers, and these feelers were passed from generation to generation.

Charles Willson Peale

Charles Willson Peale founded a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1786. It contained a collection of natural history specimens, portraits of admirable historical figures, and human artifacts from various countries. His purpose was to show the place of human beings as part of the animal kingdom. His most famous display, however, was the mastodon skeleton he obtained in 1801.

Measuring 3.35 meters high at the shoulder, and 4.5 meters from chin to rump, it was huge and strange and confusing. Was it a man or beast, an elephant, or some unknown animal? The fossil had been discovered in swampy ground and had been excavated with great difficulty. Man or beast, this ‘monstrous creature’, as it was called, would soon become celebrated as the unknown species or the ‘incognitum’.

Georges Cuvier

For many years, scientists refused to accept that some animals had become extinct. When remains were found that were unlike anything living at the time, they argued that they were unusual examples of living creatures, or that animals known only from fossils must still survive in some unexplored part of the world.

It was only at the end of the 18th century that the great French paleontologist and anatomist Georges Cuvier was able to demonstrate convincingly that extinctions were real. Cuvier was convinced that plants and animals of all types were created for their particular roles and places in the world’s environment and that they were unchanging throughout their existence.

According to him, catastrophic events in the course of history had killed off all members of some species, and their fossils would no longer be seen in the rocks. Subsequently, his evolution theory suggests, the old species were replaced by new ones that repopulated Earth.

Cuvier had an almost uncanny ability to reconstruct animals from only fragments of fossil remains. With elegant studies of the anatomy of large mammals such as elephants, Cuvier showed that fossil mammoths differed from any such creatures presently living. His many examples of fossils telling the stories of animals that lived and then disappeared were taken as incontrovertible proof of extinctions.

Hugh Miller

Hugh Miller was a 19th-century geologist. He put forward the theory that there had been several successive creations, and that each had been destroyed by a catastrophe. According to him, the Bible dealt with only the last creation. Miller’s theory of evolution explained the presence of fossils as being the remains of animals from an earlier creation.

Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz was a Professor of Zoology and Geology. He did landmark work on glacier activity and extinct fishes. He encouraged learning through direct observation of nature. Agassiz put forward the theory of a new catastrophe the Ice Age.

He believed that a sudden intense Ice Age gripped the Earth for ages, and wiped out all the existing animals and plants. His concept of the Great Ice Age brought him much fame, as he was able to present evidence in the field, especially the scratched surfaces of bedrock where rocks in the moving ice had gouged out deep marks.