The Worldʼs First Endowed School of Nursing

Abstract

T HE development of ideas and the growth of institutions do not follow a gradual and uniform course. Principles generally accepted today have all been upheld long ago by people who were misjudged and often persecuted. So it is with modern medicine. Everyone is aware of the decisive part played in it by a heroine like Florence Nightingale. The role of another remarkable though lesscelebrated woman is less known, although she was an impassioned advocate, some years earlier, of many of the ideas we now cherish, but which met at first with great opposition. Valerie Boissier, a young Swiss girl, by marriage Countess Agenor de Gasparin, has left a name as the author of numerous works, some of which received favorable notice from the French Academy. Her influence was still greater through co6peration with her husband, a well-known politician and public speaker, who supported all liberal causes, both-by voice and pen, notably in the French Parliament.2 In the middle of last century, the Gasparins were led to take part in a lively debate on the subject of the deaconess motherhouses which at that time were appearing in France and Switzerland on the lines of the institution founded by Theodor Fliedner at Kaiserswerth in 1836. Although an ardent and convinced Christian, Countess de Gasparin ex-