At almost the same time, we receive word that Miss Noyes has been decorated with the Patriotic Service Medal of the American Social Science Association and Council of the National Institute of Social Science and that she has been appointed Director of the Department of Nursing of the American Red Cross, a position which she has been filling, as acting Director, at the request of Dr. Farrand, since the death of Miss Delano. We believe all nurses will feel that this is as it should be. Miss Noyes was Miss Delano's own choice as a co-worker; her experience during the war period and through the half year which has followed the Armistice has made her thoroughly familiar with the work and the workers. She has carried it steadily forward during trying times, and has proved herself able to cope with its perplexities. She is a woman of long and varied experience in executive positions,a graduate of Johns Hopkins, she has been superintendent of nurses at St. Luke's Hospital, New Bedford and at Bellevue, New York; she was for three years president of the National League of Nursing Education and is now in her second year as president of the American Nurses' Association. We are sure the nurses of the country will give Miss Noyes their confidence and support in her new position. OTHER APPOINTMENTS OF INTEREST It will be a pleasure to all who know Miss Fox, to hear that she has been made the head of the Public Health Division of the Red Cross Nursing Service. She has been acting in this capacity since Miss Gardner's departure for Italy and the permanent appointment shows that her work deserves recognition. As announced last month in our official department by Miss Goodrich, whose signature was omitted through a typographical error, Miss Stimson succeeds her as Dean of the Army School of Nursing, Miss Goodrich returning to her post at Teachers College. Miss Stimson acts also as head of the Army Nurse Corps while Miss Dora Thompson takes a rest. The phrase "well-earned rest" was never more aptly applied than it might be here. The immense amount of detail work which has passed through the hands of Miss Thompson since the beginning of the war has seemed almost beyond comprehension and it is a wonder that she has borne the strain so long. Miss Stimson's experience overseas, where she has been advanced from one post of authority to another, gives her the needed working basis for her new tasks. MISS DELANO'S GRAVE Can anyone look at the picture of Miss Delano's lonely grave at Savenay, France, without a tightening of the throat? It is one thing to read about it, it is quite another to see it, so lonely, so far from home. Yet the flowers upon it show that it is not unremembered, and the simple cross like those marking the soldier graves around it, emphasizes the fact that Miss Delano was one of a mighty army serving its country without desire for personal distinction, if only the war might be honorably won. After all, it is life that counts, more than death, and the Red Cross Nursing Service is her everlasting memorial. Every Red Cross nurse who lives up to its ideals is helping to carry on Miss Delano's work. Every one of them who lives carelessly is trying to pull it down. UNJUST COMPARISONS We publish in this JOURNAL an article by Dr. S. J. Crumbine of Topeka, Kansas, on The Socialization of Preventive Medicine through the Public Health Nurse which is a fine presentation of the subject, except in one respect. We take great exception to his comparison of the public health nurse with one whom he calls "the graduate nurse," evidently the private duty nurse, as we term her. The truth is that almost all the public health nursing work of the country has been opened and is being carried on by women who were first private duty nurses, and no other line of work forms so good an education for public health nursing. Almost all the women in our profession who have done great things have been, early in their careers, private duty nurses. Every time we hear or read a comparison of the public health nurse with the private duty nurse which exalts the one and lowers the other, we feel indignant at the misconception of the latter's scope of work. It would seem as though the people who are thinking and studying along the lines of public health, exclusively, had lost their sense of proportion or were ignorant of nursing history. |