No one would look at a Daughter of Charity and see the steel in their personalities that gave them the ability to venture where women rarely went in the 1860’s. They ran schools, among which was St. Philomena’s School in St. Louis. They ran DePaul Hospital in St. Louis, which began as the St. Louis Mullanphy Hospital in 1828. The latter was frowned on. Nursing wasn’t considered a suitable profession for women. Nursing in public hospitals was often done by other residents of the hospital or the poor. No formal training program existed. That way of thinking began changing in the 1850’s, though. The French Daughters of Charity had served as battlefield nurses caring for French soldiers during the Crimean War. Their service had been so exemplary that many people began looking at the American Daughters of Charity and wondering Read more…