Ancient Rome
The term "nosocomial" meaning "hospital-acquired" stems from the nosocomi, the men who provided nursing care in ancient Rome.
Parabolani
In 300 A.D., a group of men, the Parabolani, started a hospital providing nursing care during the Black Plague epidemic.
Early Religious Orders
St. Benedict founded the Benedictine nursing order, while St. Alexis was in the fifth century. Military, religious and lay orders of men including the Knights Hospitalers, the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St. Lazarus and the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony provided nursing care during the Middle Ages.
The Alexians
The Alexian Brothers began as informal groups of laymen about 1300 A.D., providing nursing care for the poor.
St. John Of God And St. Camillus
St. John of God (1495-1550) devoted his life to serving the ill and mistreated and was canonized in 1690. St. Camillus (1510-1614) is credited with developing the first field ambulance. He was canonized in 1746. The symbol of his order, the red cross, remains the primary symbol of health care. In 1930, St. Camillus and St. John of God were named co-patron saints of nursing.
First American Nurse
Seventy years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Friar Juan de Mena was shipwrecked off the south Texas coast. He is the first identified nurse in what was to become the U.S.
Crimean War
The Crimean War started in 1853. A biographer of Florence Nightingale, regarded as the first modern female nurse, noted that male "orderlies" provided nursing care prior to and after Nightingale's arrival at the Crimean front.
Jean Henry Dunant
In 1859, Dunant provided nursing care after the Battle of Solferino. He was helped found the International Red Cross and the Geneva Convention. He won the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
U.S. Civil War
During the U.S. Civil War, both sides had military men serving as nurses. Men were the majority of the front line nurses while female nurses were typically restricted to general hospitals in the major cities.
Post Civil War
Both the Crimean War and the U. S. Civil War decimated the male population. Without men to help with the labor, many women were unable to continue farming and moved to cities and became "matrons" in military hospitals. The military continued to primarily use men as nurses.
The Alexian Brothers In The U.S.
In 1866, the Alexians built their first hospital in Chicago, Illinois and in 1869, opened a second hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Today their work continues around the world.
St. John of God and St. Camillus
In 1898 the U.S. fought a brief war with Spain. The Daughters of the American Revolution recruited contract female physicians and nurses during the war.
Nursing Schools For Men
The Mills School for Nursing and St. Vincent's Hospital School for Men were founded in New York in 1888. The Pennsylvania Hospital opened a school for female nurses in 1914 and simultaneously opened a separate men's nursing school.
Army Nurse Corps
In 1901, the Army Nurse Corps was formed. Only women could serve as nurses and military nursing changed from being predominately male to exclusively female.
World War I And World War II
During World War I and World War II there were nursing shortages and women were given tuition, room, board, uniforms, and a stipend to attend nursing school, but were not required to enter the service.
Two Men
In a time when few men were practicing nursing in the U.S., two men worked to promote men in nursing. Leroy N. Craig, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital men's nursing school, fought for the rights of men to participate in the American Nurses Association. Nurse Luther Christman volunteered to serve on the front if he could serve as a nurse. Christman was turned down for combat duty as a nurse by the U.S. Surgeon General.
Men Again Serve As Military Nurses
Not until 1955, after the Korean War, were men again permitted to serve as military nurses. During the intervening decades, men who were registered nurses enlisted or drafted, but were not assigned as nurses.
Nursing Schools Admit Men
Men were forbidden to attend some state-supported nursing schools until 1982.
American Assembly For Men In Nursing
The American Assembly For Men in Nursing, organized in 1971, supports and promotes men in American nursing. Originally named the National Male Nurse Association, the organization became the American Assembly For Men in Nursing in 1980. Source: Bruce Wilson, Ph.D., RN, associate professor at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, and a former board member of the American Assembly For Men in Nursing.
Two thousand years ago, nursing school was for men only.
Only men were considered "pure" enough to enter what is thought to be the world's first nursing school, which was founded in India about 250 B.C., according to Bruce Wilson, Ph.D., RN, and associate professor at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.
For the next two millennia, nursing remained male-dominated. It took warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries to transform nursing from being considered a man's job to a women's profession.
One of the biggest shifts in the profession came in 1901 when the military nursing corps was reorganized.
Men were no longer allowed to serve as nurses, furthering the process of the feminization of nursing, said Wilson, who is also the manager of the American Assembly For Men in Nursing's Web site.
