|
Back to Article List
December 6, 2002
Kathleen Jett, RN, ARNP, CS, Ph.D.
Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year, Kwanzaa , all reasons to reflect and to celebrate in many ways. It will also soon be December 21st, the winter solstice, the longest, darkest day of the year. For nurses today, these may see like dark times. In many settings there is a lack of respect and honor between nurses and from outside of nursing. Sometimes it may seem that individual survival has become a priority over caring. With a loss of caring capacity comes the loss of the natural healing that comes with caring.
The winter solstice has been celebrated for thousands of years -- from before written history. It is not just the darkest day but also the turning point. Every day after December 21st gets longer, lighter, and more sun filled until the summer solstice is reached. Winter solstice has been a time of reflection of the year past and the New Year to come.
I challenge us to see the winter solstice, holiday of the ancients, as a time to reflect on our roots, to recognize a long, rich, persecuted and exalted history. In dong so we might envision the present with new perspective.
From the time of the ancients, by the light of the sun and the moon, many women and a number of men have cared for others. Caring women and men have been called healers, wise women, medicine men, priests, gods and goddesses, sisters, brothers, midwives, nurses, witches, doctors, mothers and fathers. At all times they have observed suffering, attempted to identify the cause of the suffering, and worked to alleviate it. In certain cultures and at certain times the caring has been met with respect. At other times it has been met with scorn and suspicion.
Caring and healing in the world of Western Europe, were synonymous from as far back as we can know, from about 35,000 B.C. until about 1000 years A.D. Caring was primarily done in the domestic sphere and known as domestic medicine and midwifery. Someone, usually the mother, practiced the ancient arts, those techniques and tricks that she learned from her mother or those that she had found to be effective. The techniques ranged from praying to the gods and goddesses to administering natural medicines to performing minor surgery. Healing and caring always included the ministrations that we have come to call nursing.
Early Hebrew philosophy emphasized health promotion and disease prevention. Many Hebrew women functioned as community health nurses visiting their neighbors and the sick, providing not only healing therapies, but also food, other necessities, and education.
The Hebrew named Jesus charged his followers (Christians) to do the same, declaring corporal acts of mercy – or care of the human body, holy acts. As Christianity spread across Western Europe, so did the number of women and men who dedicated their lives to caring for others. The female religious healers / caring persons were known first as deaconesses and later as sisters, and cared primarily for other women and children. Religious male healers were first brothers and monks and later priests and bishops. At their height, the caring members of religious orders numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Western Europe, most notable were the Sisters of Charity.
In the first centuries, after 1000 AD. what was called medicine and nursing still looked the same. Both strove to end suffering and comfort the ill and dying using whatever means available. However, with time the practice of healing became tightly controlled, first by the Church and later by politicians. With the exception of midwifery, university training became the prerequisite for publicly acknowledged healing. However people continued to need the caring part of healing and university trained persons (almost exclusively men) were not always available – especially to the poor. Family members continued to practice domestic medicine and religious sisters and brothers, lay healers or wise women continued to care for the poor at least until the 1200-1300’s.
The witch craze that swept across Europe between the 12th and 17th century resulted in the loss of thousands caring persons, including many of our nursing foremothers and forefathers. It was declared that “She who cures and has not studied is a witch and she must die.” While lives were extinguished, suffering was not. Where there was need, there were still people willing to nurse, to help, to care, to comfort even at the risk of their own lives.
During the end of this period the acts of nursing and medicine were separated. Medicine became a study of the body and an honored profession of wealthy men. The care of the person or nursing was considered an evil necessity, considered the lowest form of toil and thought to have no connection to healing. While domestic medicine and midwifery persisted, public caring / healing only existed in Catholic nursing orders and groups of Protestant Deaconesses.
Public hospitals became places of death. Doctors in training experimented on patients and the “nurses” were the least ill patients or someone who had chosen to work in exchange for jail time. Bodies, dead and alive were stacked together in beds and on cold floors. Nursing, caring and healing had reached their darkest hour.
In the mid-1800s a wealthy Englishwoman named Florence Nightingale “discovered” the abhorrent conditions in hospitals. After accomplishing near miracles in the Crimean warfront, she returned to English and revolutionized hospital care. With power and insight she introduced basic concepts of sanitation and fresh air. She revived the once honorable profession of caring for persons and the clear and separate profession of nursing came into being in first in Europe and later in the United States.
Nightingale and colleagues’ resurrected nursing and caring from the darkness, as we can, collectively rise to the challenges of today with the promise of the solstice at the end of the dark and the herald of light. We can model to others the meaning of caring for our patients and each other. We can refuse to denigrate, persecute, and “execute” our colleagues. We can recognize and celebrate our special healing gifts and qualities. We can come together in the face of challenges to support each other. We can, if we choose to do so, wield our considerable collective power and influence for the betterment of persons. We can model to others the meaning of caring for our patients and each other. We can recognize the strength of our history and the power of our roots!
About the Author: Dr. Kathleen Jett holds her bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Florida. She has worked in a number of settings and in a number of roles, all focused on the care of the frail elderly. Dr. Jett has published articles on a variety of subjects and frequently conducts continuing education programs. She is currently an assistant professor of nursing at Florida Atlantic University. You may contact Dr. Jett by email at kjett@fau.edu.
|
|
 |
Corporate