UC nursing has 125-year tradition of strong women
For a century and a quarter, the foundation of the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing has been the leadership of strong women affecting change, from the seven women who started the nursing training school in 1889 to the deans and the generations of nurses molding the future of health care.
Author Wendy Hart Beckman traces the history of the nursing school in a new book, "University of Cincinnati College of Nursing: 125 Years of Transforming Health Care" as a celebration for their quasquicentennial this year.
The milestone is notable in that it places the UC nursing college in with the pioneers of nursing, yet 125 years still seems not that long for the medical field to have changed so drastically. Oh, how little we knew.
When Florence Nightingale ushered in modern nursing by treating British soldiers during the Crimean War in 1854, medical practices were archaic by today's standards. She helped to improve the sanitary conditions and set the example for nursing as a respectable profession for women.
She also started the first professional nurse training school, the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas' Hospital in London in 1860. The first U.S. school founded on Nightingale's nursing principles was Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing in New York City in 1873.
In the 1880s, conditions in Cincinnati's five hospitals were unsanitary and the nurses assisting physicians were untrained, according to Beckman. Cholera, tuberculosis and syphilis were the diseases most treated and were mostly fatal. People waited until they were near death before going to the hospital, and so hospitals became associated with death.
To help improve hospital conditions in Cincinnati, seven prominent women met with Dr. Mary Osborne in the fall of 1888 to propose the creation of the Cincinnati Training School for Nurses. This was in the days before women could vote, when they were most often identified by who their husbands were – and these women boldly organized a school for middle-class women to become professionals.
Those seven women – Helen "Nellie" Taft (wife of future President William Howard Taft), Annie Laws, Laura Gano (Mrs. John A. Gano), Mary Eva Keys, Frances Anne Taylor (Mrs. R.W.W. Taylor), Mary L. Huntington (Mrs. Frederick Huntington), and Sarah H. Woodley – formed the Society of the Training School for Nurses.
Using Bellevue as a model, the society approached Cincinnati Hospital, which agreed to set the school up in the obstetrics ward at a cost of $4,000. The money was raised thanks to generous donations from Maria Longworth Nichols Storer and William A. Procter, the son of Procter & Gamble co-founder William Procter.
Annie Murray, a graduate of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Scotland, was hired as the superintendent and matron of Cincinnati Hospital.
On Jan. 1, 1889, the first class of five students started a two-year program. In addition to attending classes, pupil nurses worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week, with half a day off on Sunday to attend church.
Beckman's book lists some nursing duties from 1887, to give an example of what was expected of a nurse back then:
• Daily sweep and mop the floors of your ward, dust the patient's furniture and window sills.
• Maintain an even temperature in your ward by bringing in a scuttle of coal for the day's business.
• Light is important to observe the patient's condition. Therefore, each day fill kerosene lamps, clean chimneys and trim wicks. Wash the windows once a week.
• Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop, or frequents dance halls will give the director of nurses good reason to suspect her worth, intentions and integrity.
The first class graduated in 1891. There were a few men in the program because "some bedside care was deemed unsuitable for women," Beckman explained, but after the first two men graduated (in 1893 and 1897), no other male graduated from the school until 1976.
Cincinnati Hospital was located on 12th Street, between Central and Plum, situated on the Miami & Erie Canal (Central Parkway), so there was a real problem with waterborne diseases and mosquitoes. In February 1915, the new Cincinnati General Hospital, designed by architects Samuel Hannaford & Sons, opened on Burnet Avenue in Avondale, with the renamed School of Nursing and Health housed in Logan Hall.
The next year, the program became a school of the UC College of Medicine and the first in the country to offer a five-year baccalaureate degree in nursing. In the 1950s, it was one of the first to award a master's degree.
The city handed over control of Cincinnati General Hospital to UC in 1960. UC's College of Nursing and Health (renamed again in 1946) moved into their current home, William Cooper Procter Hall, on the Clifton Heights campus in April 1968. Procter Hall, named for the grandson of P&G's co-founder, was designed by Woodie Garber, the architect for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County's main branch Downtown.
In the last few decades, UC's College of Nursing has greatly expanded the education opportunities. Nursing is no longer a woman's profession as plenty of men have entered the field, though perception perhaps still lags on that. There is no doubt that nurses today have greater knowledge and responsibility in the ever-advancing world of medicine.
A far cry from sweeping the floor and cleaning the chimney – not so very long ago.
MORE INFO
"University of Cincinnati College of Nursing: 125 Years of Transforming Health Care" by Wendy Hart Beckman, Orange Frazer Press, $29.99.