New aspects of the German ‘scientific nursing’ movement before World War I: Florence Nightingale's Notes on nursing disguised as part of a medical tradition.

A group of German physicians propagated ‘scientific nursing’ in the 1890s in order to establish it as a medical specialty. Martin Mendelsohn (1860–1930) emerged as the figurehead of this movement. One of his earliest key publications on this topic appeared in 1890, with a second edition in 1892. It was entitled The comfort of the sick ( Der Comfort des Kranken). The comparison with Florence Nightingale's (1820–1910) Notes on nursing led to the conclusion that Mendelsohn's book constitutes a hitherto unknown and unacknowledged reception of her ideas. Mendelsohn took great pains to demonstrate a medical tradition of ‘scientific nursing’ dating from antiquity. However, chapters 2–8 distinctly show a large number of passages that correspond to the Notes on nursing. Acknowledging Florence Nightingale would not have served Mendelsohn's interests. In his view, the role assigned to nurses was much more restricted than in the Notes on nursing and entailed merely carrying out physicians’ orders. Consequently, the development of nursing in England was not an example to be followed. Although the ‘scientific nursing’ movement failed, its ideas on the role of nurses were incorporated into the regulations of the Prussian state nursing examination of 1907. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]