section_path: History/Premodern
section_name: Premodern
paragraph_text: Premodern
  
  Nursing historians face challenges of determining whether care provided to the sick or injured in antiquity is called nursing care. In the fifth century BC, for example, the Hippocratic Collection in places described skilled care and observation of patients by male "attendants," who may have provided care now provided by nurses. Around 600 BC in India, it is recorded in Sushruta Samhita, Book 3, Chapter V about the role of the nurse as "the different parts or members of the body as mentioned before including the skin, cannot be correctly described by one who is not well versed in anatomy. Hence, anyone desirous of acquiring a thorough knowledge of anatomy should prepare a dead body and carefully, observe, by dissecting it, and examining its different parts."
  
  In the Middle Ages, members of religious orders such as nuns and monks often provided nursing-like care. Examples exist in Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and other traditions. Phoebe, mentioned in Romans 16, is described in many sources as "the first visiting nurse". These traditions were influential in the development of the ethos of modern nursing. Its religious roots remain in evidence in many countries. One example in the United Kingdom is the use of the historical title "sister" to refer to a senior nurse.
  
  During the Reformation, Protestant reformers shut down monasteries and convents, allowing a few hundred municipal hospices to remain in operation in northern Europe. Nuns who had been serving as nurses were given pensions or told to marry and stay home. Nursing care went to the inexperienced as traditional caretakers, rooted in the Roman Catholic Church, were removed from their positions. The nursing profession in Europe was extinguished for approximately 200 years.