The original meaning of ‘nurse’ did not describe a person who looked after the sick and infirm, but a woman who breast-fed a child because the mother was unable or unwilling to do so. This role was often referred to as a ‘wet-nurse’.
In Post-classical Latin, a nutricia was a wet-nurse or literally ‘a person that nourishes’. Nutricia comes from the Latin verb nutrire which means ‘to nourish’, ‘feed’ or ‘cherish’. Nutricia passed into Old French as nourice and the English word ‘nurse’ is a contraction of this. This is, ultimately, where the adjective ‘nutricious’ derives from as nūtrītius in Latin means ‘that suckles or nourishes’.
In Middle-English (the collection of English dialects spoken following the Norman Conquest), there were several variations of the word nurse including norce, nors, norsse and, in Scotland, noarse. From the early 15th century the modern day spelling of ‘nurse’ started to appear in print, still with the meaning of a ‘wet-nurse’ or a woman who was employed to take care of young children.
In Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (1623) ‘nurse’ first appears in the context of person who takes care of those who are ill: “I will attend my husband, be his nurse, Diet his sicknesse, for it is my Office”. From the 18th century, ‘nurse’ becomes associated not only with someone who cares for the sick, but a person who does this as assistant to medical professionals.
Of course, it’s Florence Nightingale who is celebrated as the woman who transformed the nursing profession. Born in 1820, she was a well-educated young woman from a privileged background, who aspired to working towards a greater good. At this point, nursing was considered a menial task of working class women; nevertheless, Florence went on to study nursing at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses in Germany at the age of 31 and, over her lifetime, changed public perceptions about the nursing profession.
During the Crimean War, with the help of her contacts at The Times newspaper, she highlighted the appalling conditions that British Army soldiers were exposed to in army hospitals. While others tried to turn a blind eye to the horrors that the war-injured endured, Florence went on to greatly improve the quality of sanitation and set new standards for the nursing profession.
In 1860, Florence founded the Nightingale School & Home for Nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital and died in London on 13th August, 1910. Two days later, a photo of a group of nurses appeared on the front page of the Daily Mail newspaper with the headline: “Miss Florence Nightingale, the ‘Angel of the Crimea’ whose death is announced with some of the nurses whose profession she created”.
