Cripes, Suzette!: National Nurses Week

This is National Nurses Week, which ends with Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12th. (Interesting fact - her name is not spelled the same way as the singing bird. Do you know how many years it took me to realize that?)

Don't expect a lecture about downtrodden nurses, a defense of the nurses' actions and attitudes or a reference to nursing's origins amongst the campfollowers and prostitutes - you won't find that here. There will be no generic photos of caps, pins or other ephemera to note the occasion this year. Neither will there be a rehashing of the Crimean War, "the Lady With The Lamp" or Country Joe McDonald's collection of nurse dolls. This year we concentrate on that courageous and dauntless breed: the New Jersey Nurse. These were some feisty women.

5827_1025092283 We begin with our patron saint and martyr, Clara Maas who lost her life during scientific studies to determine the cause of yellow fever. Not lost so much as surrendered. A native of New Jersey and a graduate of the nursing school at the Newark German Hospital, she was invited to Cuba during the Spanish-American War by the U.S. Army's chief sanitation officer. At the time, there was great controversy about whether the disease was caused by filthy conditions or transmitted via mosquito bites. For $100.00, she participated in innoculation experiments in the form of mosquito bites. Results of the first exposure were inconclusive, as only two of the seven volunteers died. Over the course of five months, she was exposed and bitten seven times. She contracted the fever and died in 1901 at the age of 25.

Think about that next time you're laying in a hospital bed whining that the nurse is ignoring your call button.

She was the first nurse honored on a U.S. postage stamp and the first nurse for whom an American hospital was named - the former Newark German Hospital now known as Clara Maas Medical Center. The Clara Maas School of Nusing there has a museum of some of her papers and personal items and she is buried in Fairmont Cemetery in Newark NJ.

Comments

"Think about that next time you're laying in a hospital bed whining that the nurse is ignoring your call button."
I don't know if I would think about Clara Maas and her payment of 100 bucks and death or not.
I'll think about how little nurses are paid. I 'll think about the fact if more men were nurses the salary may be higher. I'll think about the fact that nurses have bake sales to purchases up-to-date medical books for their floors.
And I'll think about the fact that nurses mostly do the work that doctors don't want to do and that is why my nurses is fast asleep at the desk...

Posted by: toxiclabrat | May 09, 2005 at 12:10 PM