Excerpt from Lillian Wald, _The House on Henry Street_, on the public health nurse’s contribution to human welfare, 1915.

These are a few of the manifestations of the new era in the development of the nurse’s work. She is enlisted in the crusade against disease and for the promotion of right living, beginning even before life itself is brought forth, through infancy into school life, on through adolescence, with its appeal to repair the omissions of the past. Her duties take her into factory and workshop, and she has identified herself with the movement against the premature employment of children, and for the protection of men and women who work that they may not risk health and life itself while earning their living. The nurse is being socialized, made part of a community plan for the communal health. Her contribution to human welfare, unified and harmonized with those powers which aim at care and prevention, rather than at police power and punishment, forms part of the great policy of bringing human beings to a higher level.... Lillian Wald, _The House on Henry Street_. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1915, p. 60. For more information on Lillian Wald and her activism, see the Jewish Women’s Archive "Women of Valor" exhibit at http://jwa.org/womenofvalor/wald

Time Period: Modern (Spinoza through post-WWII)