Cripes, Suzette!: National Nurses Week

You might as well start commenting, kids - we're here all week. Nothing but New Jersey nurses.

Dix Today's featured player is Dorothea Dix ( no relation to Fort Dix), the daughter of a mentally unstable mother and an abusive alcoholic father. She became a self-taught educator who first made her mark as a teacher in a girl's school in Worcester, Mass using a curriculum of her own devising - heavy on the natural sciences and the responsibilities of ethical living. Her stint as a Sunday school teacher in the Cambridge House of Corrections was her first exposure to the inhumane treatment of the insane and disturbed who were mixed in with the prison poplulation. She became a tireless crusader to improve prison conditions and establish seperate mental institutions, including the Worcester Insane Assylum and the Trenton Lunatic Asylum in New Jersey.

Although technically not a nurse, and even without formal nurses training, her reputation for organization brought her to the position of the Union Army's Superintendent of Nurses during the Civil War, where she was in charge of all women working in all Army hospitals. Here's where her Calvinist upbringing went into high gear: affronted by the common sterotypes of nurses during that time period (whores, tramps, low lifes, ec.) - but totally believing them herself - she rejected flighty and "marriage-minded" women and accepted only plain lookers and those over age 30. Then she dressed them in plain black or brown and banned jewlery and skirt hoops. Her nature was not cut out for administrative work and although she did a remarkable job of elevating standards of care for the wounded and kept up a steady stream of supplies, her stern interactions with those around her earned her the name Dragon Dix.

So here we have the genesis of the always-unflattering dress code for nurses and the progenitor of the thing that all nurses everywhere are all too familiar with: Horrible Head Nurse. While not too comfy for those unfortunate nurses under her charge, she was able to bring her causes to the attention of legislators, Presidents, Popes, and all manner of influential people. Her personal efforts resulted in the establishment of mental institutions in 15 states.

I can't help but think that the tightly wound hair buns of these early pioneers were symblos of the determination and drive that kept them working towards the goals that they established and brought to public conciousness. If you ever come across someone cranking up their hair like that, look out.

At age 80, she retired to a private apartment on the grounds of the Trenton hospital she founded and died there in 1887.