PUBLIC HEALTH NURSE

A Baptism of Fire.

Lillian D. Wald is regarded as the founder of what is now called public health or community nursing, and she was known for her contributions to school nursing and child welfare. Wald was born to a wealthy family in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in Rochester, New York. Educated at Miss Crittenden's English and French Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies and Little Girls, she was encouraged by her physician relatives to become a nurse. She spent a year nursing at the New York Juvenile Asylum and then entered Woman's Medical College in New York. During medical school Wald was asked to go to New York's Lower East Side to instruct immigrant mothers on the care of the sick. Like Margaret Sanger, she was shocked by what she saw there. One day, as she was teaching a hygiene lesson in the slum, a little girl approached her for help. The child led her through filthy, crowded tenements to...