Roots in Nursing in North America Reach to 1600s

Throughout nursing school and my years on the job, I never pondered what nursing might have been like in the 1600s.

I usually think about the origins of modern-day nursing as beginning with Florence Nightingale, who wasn’t even born until 1820. Heck, Louis Pasteur didn’t come up with his germ theory until the mid-1800s, so what tools could nurses possibly have had at their disposal in the 17th century?

What jostled my thinking about the state of the profession nearly 400 years ago was the discovery of a plaque during a recent visit to Montreal. I came upon this marker in the historic section of the city. It designates the spot where, in 1642, Jeanne Mance founded Hotel-Dieu de Montreal, one of Canada’s oldest hospitals.

I found the plaque at one end of a beautiful landscaped walkway in an area of the city overlooking the St. Lawrence River. The large brass plate didn’t say a lot, but it did raise my curiosity about Mance’s life and her contributions. I found out that there also is a park dedicated to her in another part of the city.

When I returned home, I “Googled” Jeanne Mance and learned that she was born in 1606 to a well-to-do family in France. She was one of the first women settlers in Canada, which was then called New France, arriving in 1641. A year later, “She founded a hospital in her own home, a very humble one, into which she received the sick, settlers or natives (Iroquois Indians),”according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Mance was a devout Catholic, and in the 1600s, Montreal was only a missionary colony. It was established to convert the Iroquois to Catholicism, so many of those who came to New France were priests and nuns. Mance was not a cleric and so is considered the first “lay nurse” to practice in North America, according to the Library and Archives Canada online resource.

The archives go on to say, “Not only did Jeanne Mance establish a hospital but, with remarkable zeal, she directed her energy towards laying the colony's very foundations. When the Montreal mission was in jeopardy, she crossed the Atlantic several times to save it from ruin.” She did this by asking several wealthy families in France to donate money to the colony.

The last sentence on the plaque in Old Montreal expresses a beautiful sentiment:
“Canada’s first lay nurse, Jeanne Mance, remains an inspiration to those who seek a career in the nursing profession.”

Whether we hail from Canada or the United States, we should all be grateful for this brave and caring nurse who dared to make a difference. And thank you, Montreal, for recognizing the contributions of Jeanne Mance and the nursing profession.