Anna Hamilton (1864-1935), the excellence of nursing

Biography
By Évelyne Diebolt
English

A Frenchwoman, Anna Hamilton (1864-1935), daughter of a Franco-English couple, read with passion the works of Florence Nightingale and took an interest in nursing. In order to practice it, she first passed the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree by teaching herself, and then registered at Marseille Medical School. She wanted to prepare a medical thesis on nursing staff in the hospitals in Europe and conducted an investigation throughout Europe. She passed her thesis on June 15, 1900 entitled “Considerations on Hospital Nurses.” This work was immediately published. That same year, she took up a post at the Maison de santé protestante in Bordeaux (MSP), founded in 1863. With no support staff, she was forced to recruit them from abroad. She published a professional journal: La Garde-Malade hospitalière (1906-1914). Then the war turned the MSP into a military hospital, but the institution continued to receive local paying patients. She was given permission to call the school of nurses the Florence Nightingale School. Anna Hamilton worked with American women to create a medical and social service in Aisne. A graduate, Antoinette Hervey, then opened a medical-social service in Rouen, which would employ up to thirty visiting nurses. In 1916, the MSP received a donation from the Bagatelle domain. The board of directors wanted to sell it, but Anna Hamilton managed to finance a hospital-school with the help of families bereaved by the war and a share subscription announced in the Journal of Nursing. Other establishments created by former students of the MSP opened, including the hospital-school Ambroise Paré in Lille, a nursing home for nurses in Chambon-sur-Lignon in 1927 (the Edith-Seltzer Foundation), and a sanatorium in Briançon. After a busy life, Anna Hamilton died of cancer in 1935 and was buried in Bordeaux.

Keywords

  • Anna Hamilton
  • biography
  • history
  • nursing
  • Maison de santé protestante
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