Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Corso di laurea in infermieristica - Sede di Modena

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the development of nursing care, which from pure assistance, over the centuries, will turn into a professional figure. I started to describe this phenomenon from late Greco-Roman antiquity where assistance was linked above all to the cult of the Gods, in this period also the woman could have a fundamental role. The assistance consisted above all in giving help to the infirm in their homes, as reported by the description I quoted by Alberto Angela which describes the help that a doctor and his wife give to a woman who is giving birth in her home. I then moved on to the Middle Ages, with the birth of Christianity, in this period assistance will be almost totally linked to the Christian world, in the monasteries the word Infirmario will be born, the one who assisted the sick. Many places of assistance will be born in the pilgrimage routes, these residences were mainly due to the great movements that took place during the Crusades, where there was a great need to assist people who were injured in battle. We thus arrive at the modern age where I have described a small mention of the healing women who were called witches, and then we get to talk about important figures who began to write the first books on nursing practices at the end of the modern age. Thus we arrive at the end of the 1700s where we have a big change with the French Revolution, we have the affirmation that assistance is no longer a work of charity as in the Middle Ages but health must be protected by the state. I concluded my paper by talking about Florence Nightingale, who laid the first foundations from which today's nursing figure developed, I mentioned the Italian nurses in the 19th century, in the wars of independence, up to the Italian twentieth century with the birth of profession, describing the process of the main laws.