A Nursing Legend

A Nursing Legend

A Nursing Legend of the Great War
Edith Cavell was a pioneer of her time. She was a strong independent woman who dedicated her life to nursing and helping others. Edith could never have known that she would become a martyr and a nursing figure to be remembered a century after her death.   As she awaited death she said,
"I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough; I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. I am comfortable with death, I am not afraid.” (Eldon 1965)

Edith was born in 1865 in Norfolk, England. She trained as a nurse at the age of twenty after feeling compassion within herself as she nursed her father back to health when he was near his deathbed.   She worked as a home nurse, and even cared for the Queen of Belgium at one time. After taking a short break from nursing she decided that her counterparts did not have enough training. With her mind overflowing with ideas Edith opened 'L'Ecole d'Infirmiere Dimplonier', a school for common nurses, with the support of several Belgian doctors.   It was formed by four adjoining houses in 1907.   In 1914 Edith became an authority figure for the Red Cross in Brussels when the hospital she worked in was taken over for the war effort. (Eldon 1965)
Edith’s biggest stride in her life as a nurse was showing that nursing was a career for women, not just a characteristic of a female’s social expectations.   There were not many career choices for a poor woman in the early twentieth century, and Edith’s propaganda campaigns recruited thousands of nurses for the Allied war efforts.   In Edith’s hospital injured Allied soldier’s were tended to and then helped to escape to England. (Webster’s 1988)
With all of the great moments in history surrounding Edith’s advances in nursing and...