THERE is no reference to nurses in the official records of the first campus Hospital of 1869. When the Hospital was enlarged in 1876, it was recommended that two nurses be employed, "one male and one female," though the position was still apparently such a menial one that nurses are not mentioned by name in the Regents' Proceedings until 1881, when Dr. E. O. Bennett put in a claim for $130 for thirteen weeks' nursing services during the summer of 1880. The following year two young doctors and one woman were appointed at a salary of $300 each. In 1883 the position of wardmaster was recorded in the Regents' Proceedings; it was abolished in 1891. Apropos of this unusual title, the late Dr. W. J. Mayo wrote to Dr. Peterson in 1937:
In my student days … there were comparatively few nurses, in the modern sense, and a good deal of the work was done by practical nurses, the students, and helpers generally. There was attached to each ward, a wardmaster and wardmistress who were responsible for the care of the patients, and gave the students their orders.
Peterson
After 1891 there was a steady growth in the number of nurses; by 1896 there were sixteen. This was probably the result of the authorization in 1891 of a training school for nurses and of a two years' nursing course.
The enrollment in the first year of the School was eight. Seven were graduated in December, 1893. Mrs. Jane Pettigrew, a trained nurse then pursuing medical studies in the University, directed the training. The next year President James B. Angell observed that the course was "attracting a large number of intelligent and devoted women, who render a serv-vice to the sick, hardly inferior to that of the physician."
Graduates of the School, a head clinic nurse and two head nurses, were permanently employed by the Hospital for the first time in 1899. It is also worthy of note that graduates of the School served in the Spanish American War. By 1900 the School had developed a sufficient sense of solidarity to organize an alumnae association, with eighteen charter members. By the year 1924-25, 190 nurses were in training. The administrative nursing staff included, in addition to a matron and a dietitian, a principal of the training school, a superintendent and an assistant superintendent, a director of the Hospital education department, and two instructors.
This rapid increase in the nursing staff