title: Matronized nursing service at Mobile City Hospital in the mid-19th century: a paradigm of altruism and indigent patient care.
abstract: Influences upon the development and evolution of nursing groups and the profession have been multifactorial: cultural, economic, political, and social. Although monastic and chivalric orders throughout antiquity provided the beginnings with hierarchical organizations and a sense of voluntarism and vocation, it was not until the mid-19th century that the concept of a nursing service became codified and more hospital-oriented. The inception of a matronized nursing service in the Mobile City Hospital under the tutelage of the Superintendent, Dr. Willis Roberts, antedated the rapid expansion of nursing education and service recommended and instituted by Florence Nightingale. The former served as a paradigm of altruism as "women attendants" became formally associated with a hospital-based "nursing service," initially under the directorship of a lay matron, Mrs. Sarah Dubois, and subsequently under a succession of Sisters of the Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of Charity (America). Although ostensibly instituted to render care to "female paupers," the matronized nursing service was readily expanded, and subsequently delivered care to the entire, predominantly indigent patient population. The paradigm was worthily perpetuated during the latter half of the 19th century in vitually all hospitals as nursing education and services continued to become more secularized and technologically sophisticated.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, University of South Alabama, Mobile.
authors.forename: R K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Salley
authors.forename: C B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Rodning
mesh_terms: D000407:Alabama; D000533:Altruism; D006676:History of Nursing; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D008489:Medical Indigency / Q000266:history*