Thoreau, Henry D, Walden Essay Example for Free

Thoreau, Henry D, Walden Essay Henry David Thoreau, who deals with nature, remains to this day something of a mystery. He was an American essayist, poet, and sensible philosopher, best known for his autobiographical story of life in the woods, WALDEN (1854). Thoreau became one of the leading personalities in New England Transcendentalism. Thoreaus primary genre was essay, and his fascination with his natural surroundings is reflected in many of his writings dealing with totally different subjects. Natural History of Massachusetts includes poetry, describes the Merrimack River, and discusses the best technique for spear fishing. Although he has had more interpreters than any of our other writers on nature, his complex personality has eluded an ever-gathering host of sentimental disciples, whom he would have been the first to spurn , and nearly all his ingenious critics from Lowell and Stevenson to those of his centenary in 1917. He has been regarded as an American Diogenes and a rural Barnum; as a narrow Puritan, as a rebel against Puritanism, as a German-Puritan romanticist; as a sentimentalist; as a poet-naturalist; as a hermit worshiping Nature; as an anarchistic dreamer; as a loafer, Where, amid these bewildering and often equally plausible interpretations, are we to find what he himself called his true centre, if indeed he has one? Obviously, the answer should lie within the twenty volumes of his collected writings; in part, however, it should be revealed by an examination of the influences that were most important in making him what he was. John Thoreau-one of Carlyles sincere, silent fathers of genius, who, in his manufacture of pencils and plumbago, was more intent on excellence than on pecuniary gain-and of Cynthia Dunbar, handsome and spirited, one of the most unceasing talkers ever seen in Concord, whom her staid community was inclined not altogether to approve. His love of nature seems to have been adumbrated in his mother; certainly it was evoked very early, since he tells of the keen impression produced on his imagination, when he was only four or five years old, by the sight of Waldens fair waters and woods, which, he says, for a long time made the drapery of my dreams. Early, too, came the tendency to reverie and the love of solitude, although for some years he lived, like Wordsworth, mainly the life of glad animal movements, wandering over the countryside, to woods, lakes, and rivers-hunting, fishing, berry-picking, boating, swimming. Thoreau was associating with men on other grounds than the raptures of youth in contact with nature; and this habit grew until, at Harvard College, he paid little heed to the curriculum, and He embarked upon a long voyage of unchartered reading that profoundly influenced his outlook on nature and on human life . For the field observations of a student of nature Thoreau was admirably endowed. There was a wonderful fitness, said Emerson, of body and mind. He had in high degree a species of dexterity not uncommon in the Yankee. He understood the relation between sensuous vigour and subtlety and the life of a naturalist: The true man of science, he wrote in the Journal, will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. Accurate perception in the metaphysical as well as the physical sphere he believed to be dependent on a fit body. The whole duty of man is to make to oneself a perfect body, a fit companion for the soul, since the bodily senses are channels through which we may receive ineffable messages-subservient still to moral purposes, auxiliar to divine. This relation between body and soul he was almost incessantly conscious of; certainly he never cultivated body for the sake of body, and, being a good New Englander, had no erotic strain. Nothing was more foreign to his nature than the sensuality of a certain type of vigorous masculinity to be found in all ages, notably in the Renaissance, when poet and painter, as well as philosopher, had ground for saying that not all the snows of Caucasus could avail to allay the fires within me. Driven to choose between body and soul, Thoreau would have had no hesitation: I must confess there is nothing so strange to me as my own body, he wrote in his Journal. I love any other piece of nature, almost, better. That is his view of body as body, but body as minister of the divine he could not value too highly, and, if not of the Renaissance, he was equally not of the Middle Ages. He was indeed all- sentient. Other poets of nature have not been so fortunate. Thoreaus Taking nature as his province, Thoreau studied her faithfully, acquainting himself with her multitudinous facts, her exact rules and laws, her endless diversity and loveliness of form and movement, till he was prone to forget that knowledge of the part was but a means to knowledge of the whole. Yet inwardly he knew and remembered that to attain the true end, to penetrate to the reality beneath the show, he must stir the deeper currents of his own being, rouse himself out of that somnambulism which, according to Carlyle, is what we please to call life. How could he hope to read rightly the holy book of nature if he brought to it nothing better than the unreal light of the dream world in which the ordinary man lives without knowing it-that ordinary man of whom Plato says, dreaming and slumbering in this life, before he will awake here he arrives at the world below, and has his final quietus . Thoreaus subtle and ambiguous synthesis is founded on a fiction. His account of his tax resistance in the essay revises his tax resistance in the world, in his community of Concord. Thoreau tells us he finds in himself an instinct toward the higher, or spiritual, life, and another toward a primitive and savage one. He reverences them both: ‘I love the wild no less than the good. ’ For wildness and goodness must ever be separate. Thoreau repudiates the physical life with the astounding statement— in Walden of all books—‘Nature is hard to be overcome but she must be overcome. ’ In this new context it appears that Nature is abruptly aligned with the feminine, the carnivorous, and the carnal; though a mans spiritual life is ‘startlingly moral’ one is nonetheless susceptible to temptations from the merely physical, or feminine; urges to indulge in a ‘slimy beastly life’ of eating, drinking, and undifferentiated sensuality. Thoreau speaks as a man to other men, in the hectoring tone of a Puritan preacher, warning his readers not against damnation (in which he cannot believe-he is too canny, too Yankee) but against succumbing to their own lower natures: ‘We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. ’ Sensuality takes many forms but it is all one-one vice. All purity is one. Though sexuality of any kind is foreign to Walden, chastity is evoked as a value, and a chapter which began with an extravagant paean to wildness concludes with a denunciation of the unnamed sexual instincts. ‘I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject, I care not how obscene my words are, but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity Thoreaus extensive accounts of his house in Walden demonstrate a lively appreciation of issues in current architectural thought. Pinning down his intellectual sources, however, often proves difficult, and it is uncertain whether or not he knew the villa books firsthand. There is some evidence that he was familiar with Downing, albeit at a later date than the Walden experiment. He mentions Downings A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841) and The Fruits and Fruit Trees of North America (1845) in a brief enumeration of books on a friends shelf in 1857, and in a journal entry of 1852, he critiques the notion that one should take up a handful of the earth at your feet paint your house that colour, a conceit that had appeared in Downings writings in 1846 and 1850. Joseph J.  Moldenhauer argues, however, that Thoreaus source was instead William Wordsworths Guide to the Lakes (1810), a copy of which Thoreau owned (the fifth edition, of 1835, is an American compilation), in which the handful of the earth conceit is attributed to Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) in conversation. Moldenhauer stresses that Thoreaus knowledge of Downing is circumstantial rather than documentary; nonetheless, the circumstantial evidence seems strong, given that Downing was at the height of his popularity and influence at the very moment of Thoreaus 1852 remarks . Elsewhere Thoreaus Nature is unsentimental, existentialist. In ‘Brute Neighbours,’ for instance, Thoreau observes an ant war of nearly Homeric proportions and examines two maimed soldier ants under a microscope; the analogue with the human world is too obvious to be emphasized . Although Thoreau introduces the irreconcilability of man and Nature in Walden, in The Maine Woods (1864) he gives the inscrutability of Nature its fullest treatment. In each of Thoreaus three quests into the forest of Maine he foregrounds an epistemological crisis which ultimately reveals the inscrutability of Nature, and the inability of man, as Melville might suggest, to pierce through the pasteboard mask of Nature. In Ktaadn, Thoreau introduces the epistemological themes that he will develop further in Chesuncook and Allegash and East Branch. Each of these three excursions is an extravagant wandering from civilization out into the wild interior of Maine, and then back to civilization (although it must be noted that none of the three excursions is completely circular: in the first and third journeys. Thoreau and his companions leave from Boston, but only return as far as Bangor; in the second journey Thoreau leaves from Boston and returns to Oldtown, just a bit past Bangor). The central opposition at work in all three excursions is the contrast between civilization and Nature, the tamed and the primitive. The hallmarks of civilization are money, property, politics, and machines, such as the railroad and steamboat; the wilderness features wild animals, tangled plants, bugs, mountains, rivers, and Mount Ktaadn. Ktaadn, the first excursion, takes place in 1846. The themes of Ktaadn are grounded in the relationship between civilized man and primitive Nature. Thoreau sets out from Boston into the wilderness of Maine in order to ascend Mount Ktaadn in an effort to re-establish an original relation with Nature, to push beyond boundaries into the realm of the Indian storm-bird Pomolawho, according to Penobscot legend, lives on Mount Ktaadn-where man and Nature unite and ultimate truths are revealed. He never reaches the summit of Mount Ktaadn, however, and Thoreau makes it clear that Nature remains ultimately inscrutable. Speaking of Ktaadn, Thoreau writes: It was vast, Titanic, and such as man never inhabits. Some part of the beholder, even some vital part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends. He is more alone than you can imagine. There is less of substantial thought and fair understanding in him than in the plains where men inhabit. His reason is dispersed and shadowy, more thin and subtle, like the air. Vast, Titanic, inhuman. Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly, Why came here before your time. This ground is not prepared for you. Thoreau writes: Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature, daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks. Having sought the unification of man and Nature, and failed. But, just as Thoreau fails to reach the top of Ktaadn, none have gone high enough up the mountain to find the origin of the spring. Thoreaus second journey into the wilderness of Maine occurs in 1853. Thoreau more fully develops a series of oppositions introduced in Ktaadn. In Chesuncook Thoreau explores the contrast between civilization and wilderness, the civilized and the primitive, the present and the past, lower uses of Nature and higher laws, the indiscriminate hunter and the poet, and commodity and discipline. In his excursion, Thoreau wishes to recapture the past-to relive what the Jesuit missionaries experienced when travelling through the primitive wilderness untouched by civilized man-but he is unable to: he is tainted by the corrosive effect of civilization. Thoreau makes this clear central crisis: the destruction of the moose by Thoreaus band of indiscriminate hunters. Framed by suggestive allusions to Mount Ktaadn, Thoreaus participation in the killing of the moose provokes the wrath of Nature against Thoreau, thereby cutting off any chance. Thoreau may have had of succeeding where he failed in Ktaadn: to establish an original relation with Nature, to go beyond boundaries and express truth . In Chesuncook Thoreau laments his only half-willed participation in the destruction of Nature; in A Minor Bird the narrator tries to understand what there is within man that would cause him to silence any song of Nature, whether that song be in-or-out of key. The suggestion in A Minor Bird is that there is some mysterious separation between man and Nature, a disharmony. Thoreau reflects on the relentless, inevitable advance of civilization, and the destruction of Nature, which this advance brings with it. This poses a serious problem, for the Poet, notes Thoreau, and draws power and inspiration from contact with primitive Nature. In the end Thoreau suggests that perhaps man can preserve some of the raw wilderness left in America (through some form of park system or similar venture). This solution is Thoreaus problematic attempt at a mediating compromise between the relentless progress of civilization and the need of the Poet to tap into the inscrutable power within Nature, the Poets muse. In the past, Nature was untouched and available to the Poet; in the present, Nature is quickly receding. Thoreau introduces the idea of Nature as Muse in Chesuncook. Thoreau is doubly-damned: the mythological tablets that only the poet can read are being destroyed by civilization, and the poet himself has been so corrupted by civilization that even he can no longer read the few glowing wood chips that remain. The poet yearns for communication with Nature, but he cannot bridge the gulf, which separates them. In the end, Thoreau symbolically resigns himself to his fate: when hop and Indian Joe pass by Ktaadn on their way back home, they do not even attempt to climb. Thoreau complains testily in his Journal (1852). One needs distance to be able to focus his vision. One needs space and freedom of movement to refocus his vision, keep it unconstrained by familiarity, habit and custom. In Thoreaus view, lack of originality and morning freshness amounts to near blindness. What makes nature nonhuman, but, for that very reason, also a perfect conversationalist is that nature is ever original, lacking intention and memory. Both, in Thoreaus eyes, are socially conditioned and therefore suspect, the first associated with private interest, the second, with the bonds of tradition. Natural existence, on the other hand, is superior to petty concerns and designs, it unfolds spontaneously moment-by-moment, offering itself to man as a pure tonic. Vista and novelty are what Thoreau treasures most in relationships and communication, and these natures would provide amply . Until recently, Thoreaus scientific interests and pursuits were dismissed by critics as amateur and sloppy science coupled with a declined prose style. Only recently, with the 1993 publication of Faith in a Seed—a collection of not just his late natural history essays but also including the first publicat ion of his unfinished manuscripts—has it become apparent that Thoreau had accomplished something important. In Faith, he demonstrated by observation, experimentation and analysis, how 99 percent of forest seeds are dispersed; and how forests change over time, and regenerate after fire or human destruction. Thoreau worked at his familys pencil factory in 1837-38, 1844, and 1849-50. He had a natural gift for mechanics. According to Henry Petroski, Thoreau discovered how to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire in 1821 by Charles Dunbar. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to producing plumbago, used to ink typesetting machines. Frequent contact with minute particles of graphite may have weakened his lungs. He travelled to Quebec once, Cape Cod twice, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his excursion essays, A Yankee in Canada, Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods, in which travel intineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Thoreau was not without his critics. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreaus endorsement of living alone in natural simplicity, apart from modern society to be a mark of effeminacy: Thoreaus content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences. Stevenson was sickly much of his life, bed-ridden and cared for by his mother and wife, but craved a life of adventure and travel. However, English novelist George Eliot, writing in the Westminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded: People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every mans life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may discourage Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy. Throughout the 19th century, Thoreau was dismissed as a cranky provincial, hostile to material progress. In a later era, his devotion to the causes of abolition, Native Americans, and wilderness preservation have marked him as a visionary.

Camera Tricks :: essays research papers

Camera Tricks   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The box office movie Spiderman 2 is playing in theater now. The story is about a nerdy American teenager who later becomes an ultimate superhero, bestowed with incredible powers and lots of cool features. It seems childish right; we as adults have watched these types of movies since we were kids. Don’t people ever get bored with it? Probably not - that movie still reached the highest income compared to other movies that are also playing currently on cinemas. And what do you think the cause of that? It is because of people now have becoming so attached to the Media, movies and television especially, to identify themselves with. Neal Gabler once wrote, â€Å"Whatever else American films do, the most popular ones are almost always about wish fulfillment, and the great stars are the ones with whom viewers can identify and through whom they can transcend themselves. They empower the audience.† It is a fact then that the Media tries to portray and characterize the perfect characters in the society through movie screens. â€Å"The movies hit them where they live – in their own state of desperation and doubt. Movies don’t just provide them with escape, as the conventional wisdom would have it. They give teenagers the exhilaration of hope through the illusion of power.† People are being deluded by these so called perfect characters that they have adapted from action figures, super heroes, celebrities and all other glamorous individualities. But are they really so great and perfect after all? Those characters are not even real; they are just illusions that the Media have created. There is a big difference between characters on screens and on reality where people should be aware; whether you like it or not, it will affect you inevitably.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Media has so many tricks in the matter of creating perfect role models. It illustrates the fancy lifestyle of rock and movie stars; the life of young, rich and famous persons on television as great examples of a perfect life. Most TV shows would picture famous artists and models managed themselves with lots of money, plenty of girl or boy friends, luxurious cars, castled housed and all others magnificent things. Media tries to teach people how money and famous can buy you the high status and power, thus, give everything you want. It seems like a dream come true, right? On the contrary, they seldom show programs picturing the negative side of those glamorous lifestyles.

Of Mice and Men Essay

The American dream was almost impossible in the 1930’s to achieve due to the Wall Street crash in 1929. This then started of the American depression throughout the 1930’s. I believe that John Steinbeck might have chosen to write of mice and men during this time to show what life was like for the last few migrant ranch workers travelling the country from job to job looking for work. Steinbeck would have been able to do this as he himself had grown up in the same area on a ranch that his father owned, he had also worked on the ranch so he would know what the ranch hands were like, what they dreamed of achieving, how they treated each other and acted towards one another. Steinbeck would have been able to describe in detail what the area and the ranches would have looked like, and also what the workers would have been like he might have used descriptions of actual workers that worked on his father’s ranch. The novel it’s self is written like a theatre play as it is only a short novel but it gives the reader great detail in its descriptions of how the scenery would have been set. â€Å"For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool†. The second scene in the book is when they arrive at the ranch and go into the bunk house â€Å"against the walls, were eight beds, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking†. There is also a lot descriptive detail of the characters. Curley’s wife in particular has an in depth character description which I believe will make up for her having no name. There are no chapter numbers in the novel but the novel is structured like acts in a play with each act having scenes of rising and falling tension at the beginning and end to entice the reader to read on. There are a limited number of characters in the novel which are all based in one place in the novel rather than spread out over several locations all over the Salinas River. The plot structure used for this novel is a classic linear quest narrative structure and is a very common way of western story telling. This type writing is where the main character of the story usually sets out to fulfil a dream. The dream in this novel for George is of buying his own land and being his own boss but it ends up with the George main character righting a wrong that Lennie has committed. The story usually ends up following a straight line from beginning to end following a line of causes and events throughout the novel. The story starts of with the initial situation where we meet the main characters and learn about their characteristics. The story continues onto the inciting incident where we meet Curley’s wife, and then follows onto the problem phase where we learn of any obstacles that the characters need to over come. The climax comes next where the protagonist must overcome the antagonist in order to achieve their goal; this then leads to the resolution of events where everything settles down in preparation for the end of the novel. Steinbeck introduces his characters George and Lennie as the two main who has to overcome the antagonist character which is Lennie. The readers will most relate to the character of George because he appears to the reader to be kind gentle hard working. You can tell these traits about him with the way he looks after Lennie and the fact that they move all over the country together, where as most farm hands travel on there own â€Å"guys like us quote†. Lennie is the antagonist of the story he is the character that is stopping the protagonist from succeeding at their dream. Lennie is a child like character who likes to pet nice things and this results in him attacking and killing. We see evidence of this throughout the novel when carry’s a dead mouse round at the beginning which he says he has accidentally killed and then when he kills the puppy given to him by the character Slim. This all ends with him killing Curley’s wife in the barn. This results in George final ly overcoming Lennie by killing him. The character that I have chosen is Curley’s wife she is portrayed as a femme fatale where as I see the character as being more than that. I see that she is a lonely woman looking for attention and someone to talk to as her husband Curley doesn’t speak to her. â€Å"Well I ain’t giving you no trouble. Think I don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time†. We here about the character before we actually meet her when Candy is gossiping to George and Lennie about her just after they have met curly he says she is pretty and gives everyone the eye also that she is blamed for everything that goes wrong on the ranch, leading the reader to see her a tart â€Å"Well, I think Curley’s married†¦.. a tart† when we do meet her later on in that scene she is given an in depth character description. She is described as a girl who is heavily made up full lips, red nails, hair hung in clusters. After George and Lennie have met her George refers to her as jail bait and warns Lennie to stay away from her. This is where we are first given the impression that the dream is going to fail to become reality. Lennie can’t stop starring at her and she leans against the door frame pushing her body forward flirting with them. She says she is looking for Curley which is what she always says. I would say out of all the characters in the book she relates best to slim as he is the only person who doesn’t think that she is a tart. We meet her three times in total in the novel the third time ending in her death thus ending the dream for George and Lennie. The second time we meet her is in crooks room where I she is also heavily made up again she is mean to the guys that are left behind she calls them all a name â€Å"nigger, an’ a dum dum, and a lousy ol’ sheep†. The dialogue that is used after the scene is set is used to help move the story forward and develop the characters. The dialogue used is quite simple to start off with at the beginning and developing into more detailed and heavy the further through the scene we go. The dialogue is also very descriptive of what the character that is being spoken to is doing at that particular moment. Curley’s wife dialogue is mostly I would say heavy to give the indication that she is a complex character in the story â€Å"sure I gotta husban’. You all seen him. Swell guy, ain’t he? Spends all his time sayin’ what he’s gonna do to guys he don’t like, and he don’t like nobody. Think I’m gonna stay in that two-by- four house and listen how Curley’s gonna lead with his left twice, and then bring in the ol’ right cross† the main function of that quote is to say what she thinks of the life that she has got and how she is treated by her husband. The dialogue used by Curley’s wife is mostly about her being a lonely character â€Å"I get lonely, you can talk to people but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to talk to anybody†. She is also sympathetic to Lennie when she learns he has killed his puppy â€Å"don’t you worry none. He was jus’ a mutt. You can get another one easy. The whole country is full of mutts†. The main function of this dialogue is that you see she found someone who wants to talk back to her and someone she can talk to who isn’t scared of Curley but Curley is scared of them. Steinbeck has structured the whole story so that it leads the reader to the expectation of the dream failing for George and Lennie. The novel title is the first clue that we get of this idea as it is taken from the poem to a mouse by Robert burns â€Å"But, mousie, thou art not alone, improving foresight may be in vain, the best laid schemes of mice and men, go oft astray and leave us nought but grief and pain, to rend our day†. The next one is what we learn about Lennie liking to stroke and pet nice things, and finding out what happened in weed their last place of employment. Lennie is the character who is the most dedicated to the dream and he is also the one who expresses it the most, George however supports him. We then find out about the mice that Lennie keeps on accidentally killing before he progresses up to the killing of the puppy in the barn, this leads to the accidental killing of Curley’s wife also in the barn. There is also when Carlson shots Candy’s dog in the back of the head which is setting us up for George killing Lennie which is does in exactly the same way. When George is telling slim why they left weed he says â€Å"if I was bright, if I was even a little bit smart, I’d have my own little place, an’ I’d be bringin’ in my own crops, ‘stead of doin’ all the work and not what comes up outta the ground† I think means that George does not realty think the dream will ever become reality. I believe that Steinbeck may well have chosen to write Of Mice and Men at the time he did in 1937 as it was a time when both the story and the reality would have been very similar, as all over America migrant workers were being replaced by machines and it will show what life was like for the remaining migrant workers on ranches. He made the story a tragedy to show that all people dream and that sometimes their dreams will fail. Steinbeck wanted the reader to understand what it was like being a migrant worker on a ranch during the depression and to show how they were treated by the owners. He also wanted the reader to know that everyone dreams of a better life for themselves and that they will strive hard to try achieve it. The story its self does still have some relevance today as there are not enough jobs and so people are still continuing to rely on agencies where they will travel from job to job

Nursing in the 1900-1919 - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 1 Words: 391 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2017/09/18 Category History Essay Type Argumentative essay Tags: Health Care Essay Did you like this example? Healthcare and nursing in the 1900-1919 period would change history forever. Nursing during this time would change from the traditional bedside nursing at home to a more institutional based nursing within the hospitals (Porter-O’Grady, T. 2004). In the Early 20th century most nursing education was hospital based and students learned by doing. Care was now being delivered at the hospitals. Organized medicine begins to emerge with the American Medical Association (AMA) reorganizing as the national organization of state and local associations. Half of the physicians in the country become members by 1910 (Healthcare Crisis: Healthcare Timeline, 2009). Thanks to Florence Nightingale for the reformation of hospitals and their sanitation methods, surgery is now common. Public health nursing was on the rise due to a recent influx of immigrants into the United States. Nurses went to homes in slums and tenement housing and taught about cleanliness, disease prevention, nutriti on, and child care. In 1912, the National Organization for Public Health Nursing was founded. Nurse registration would begin to emerge and the Nurse Corps (female) would become permanent in February, 1901 (Nursing History Calendar, 2009). The nursing profession in the early 20th century was limitless. Nurses were setting their own rules and guidelines. There were so many great things happening during 1900-1919 including the first publication of the American Journal of Nursing in 1900. Sophia Palmer (first editor-in-chief) would use this journal to unite colleagues around the nation in an effort to influence political action and social reform (Mason, Leavitt and Chaffee, 2007). Nursing evolved greatly since the 1900’s, yet the foundations still remain. Sanitization of surgical instruments continues yet done in a more technologically advanced way, as with all of the other pioneer work. Public health has also developed greatly, although with the same goal in mind. To teach and educate the public against disease, and promote health and wellness. Florence Nightingale was a pioneer in nursing and her work continues to impact the nursing profession on a global level. Despite her death in August, 1910 her work lives on. References Healthcare Crisis: Healthcare Timeline. Retrieved September 14, 2009, from https://www. pbs. org/healthcarecrisis/history. htm Nursing History Calendar. (2008) American Association for the History of Nursing. Retrieved September 14, 2009, from https://www. aahn. org/nursing historycalendar. html Mason, D. J. , Leavitt, J. K. , Chaffee, M. W. (2007). Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care (5th ed. ) St. Louis, Missouri: Saunders Elsevier. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Nursing in the 1900-1919" essay for you Create order