The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-07
MISS OTTLEY
 REVIEWS HISTORY OF
 NURSING IN SPEECH

Miss Janet Ottley, superintendent Of the visiting Nurse association and Miss Rose Porter of the Charity Or ganizaton society. spoke last evening Park Street Congregational church which was conducted by the WOmans $ League Of the church.
 Miss OttIeyS talk in part was as follows:
 With the beginning of the Chris tan era we find the care of the sick both in their homes and in hospitals to be one of the chief functions of the church. From the days of Phoebe,
 whom St Paul describes as "a sue Corer Of many we find orders of nursing comprising high and low, patrlclan and peasant, practically all under ecclesiastical control. For some years the sisterhOOds visited the sick in their homes, but the decree Of the Council of Trent m I545 that all Orders of Women should be clois- side work
 The next important effort to es- tabllsh Visiting Nursing was made by st Vincent de Paul, when he founded the Order of the Sisters Of Char ". The history of this order is especially interesting to the modern public health and social worker a $ it's Drin- ciples are so Ike those upon which we base our work of today The most important step to follow this was the nineteenth century revival of inter- est in nursing. which followed the work of Florence Nightingale. In 1859 she aided William RathbOne 70 establish the District Nursing Asso- ciation in Liverpool. The movement spread, and was placed upon a ner- tiOnal basis by Queen Victor a at the time of Her Majesty's Diamond Jub1- lee. A financial foundation was then established which made possible the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute TOT Nurses. which trains nurses to be sent to all parts of the Empire
 Tn the United States the devefOD- me mt of Visiting Nursing followed the same lines as in England. at first be- ing done by religious orders bon Catholic and Protestant. The first group of lay women to organize the work was the Ladies' Benevolent So- ciety of Charlestown, South Carolina, who framed a society. which is still in existence, in 1913. From that time the visiting nurse movement mas grown. keping pace with the growth of the public health movement in general, until it Is recognized as an integral part of the health program of every progressive community.
 ''The Bridgeport Visiting Nurse Association was organized in 1910 with only one nurse. It Is now in corporated. and has a staff of 22 nurses, trained to give bedside care under medical direction to any type of case which can be cared TOT az home under a system of regular vis- i1ng IS we'll as to take a vital part ia the municipal health program, and to aid in prom otinE public and pri- vate health by the instruction of the individual The Visiting Nurse zsso- ciation last year made 37,7O0 visits 70 4.592 patients. The support of the organization is derived from the Bridgeport Financial Federation. the fees paid by patients able to do so. and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company In addition to other nUrs- ing work, it supports the HemIOcks, a country home for undernOurished and convalesce1t clN ldren; S5 per cent. of the proceeds of the Christmas Seal Sale is given directly to the SUD- port of the tuberculosis work done by te Visiting Nurse Association"
 Lantern slides showing various phases of the work were exhibited.