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The history of all types of nursing is a nursing practice taught in the home and passed down from mother to daughter. The forerunner of public health nurses and probably occupational health nurses were the women designated as Christian deaconesses who visited and cared for the poor and sick. St. Vincent de Paul's Sisters of Charity were an outstanding example of this.
In the sixteenth century Agricola, a German scholar and physician, became aware of special diseases associated with certain professions. He lived in a mining town and cared for miners. Working conditions were very poor because there was no protection for the miners. Agricola described the increased mortality of miners due to pulmonary diseases. He documented that one woman had had seven husbands and each had worked in the mines and died of the same disease. He published these observations in 1556 and they were translated into English by a young engineer named Herbert Hoover who later became President of the United States.'
Another physician, Bernardino Ramazzini, was very interested in occupational medicine and wrote a book in the seventeenth century about his observations of diseases associated with special occupations. His was the first systematic study of occupational disease. He strongly urged doctors to question their patients about their professions when diagnosing them and he noted that many workers were misdiagnosed when this was not considered. He became known as the father of occupational medicine because of his extensive interest, his observation. and his concern for the worker's health.
At the time of the Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, there was a small number of hospitals and nurses. The nursing profession was not very well defined or refined. The Industrial Revolution greatly influenced nursing and especially affected nursing in England, perhaps because there was such a great need for nursing services there at that time. Living conditions contributed to poor health because during this revolution, families were moved from the countryside where the father worked as an independent farmer or tradesman to crowded, dirty, industrial sites, Many times the husband moved to the worksite leaving his wife and children behind. The wife often resorted to prostitution to feed the family, or became an alcoholic out of frustration. Community health problems were brought about by this occupational...