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Student Body: 1925

Washington, D.C., circa 1925. "Homeopathic Hospital." And the leg bone's connected to the knee bone ... National Photo Co. glass negative. View full size.

Washington, D.C., circa 1925. "Homeopathic Hospital." And the leg bone's connected to the knee bone ... National Photo Co. glass negative. View full size.

 

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Re: re: grey blouse

The young lady in full student uniform at the board with the pointer is likely answering questions posed by the instructor, whom I bet is the older lady in the white uniform sitting close to the front of the room. She may actually be wearing her cap, but the angle of her head and the style of her cap could be obscuring it. If she did not graduate from this hospital's nursing school, but came here later to work, her cap could be different from the other students. If you look very closely behind her left ear, it looks like a small portion of something white is peeking out.

As for the student nurse in a seat at the front of the room, not wearing the bib to the apron, or a cap ~ it's possible that not wearing those items is a punishment for some infraction of the very stiff rules under which the students lived. They lived in a Student Nurses Home or residence on hospital grounds while training, under the sharp eye of one or more House Mothers. They had pretty strict conditions under which they had to behave, and punishment varied according to the infraction. Taking away the cap, once it had been awarded, was a real humiliation for many, and could be applied for several months. Even being caught smoking while in uniform, or while in the dorm itself could have been grounds. If the bib went along with it, it could have been a real dilly ~ like coming in after hours on a week night! They were tough, and meant it! This could explain her presence in a room full of apparently advanced students.

(On closer examination, there may be another student nurse caught with her hand in the cookie jar. In the back row, far left, there seems to be another case of attending class sans cap and apron...she looks like she's trying to duck behind the student in full uniform in front of her when the picture was taken.)

Walletectomy

"Watch carefully. It is critical that you understand that the wallet can be found in this general location on the adult male. You can expect to assist the doctor in many wallet extractions in the typical modern medical practice."

Re: Grey Blouse

You will also note she is not wearing her nurse's cap.
Likely a younger student, not yet entitled to the full uniform. The only other without cap looks like a doctor, observing the session.

Not that long ago

That nurses looked like this. I distinctly remember nurses dressed this way in the late 70's. Somewhere along the line they decided to change over to medical scrubs. What a shame. I enjoyed looking at the legs of the pretty young nurses when I was in the hospital due to a knee injury.

Instruction

I'm guessing, from its thickness, that the instruction manual for the pencil sharpener must be written in multiple languages

Those Were the Days

When nurses looked like nurses. Now they look like janitors. Star Trek had it wrong. We are not all going to end up wearing one-piece jumpsuits everywhere, we are all going to be wearing pajamas 24/7 in a few years.

Grey Blouse

I wonder why the very good looking young lady in the center wore a non-white blouse?

[All the rest are wearing those as well; what she doesn't have is the upper part of the apron covering it, for some reason. - tterrace]

Pay attention!

"Young man, how will you ever get abywhere if you don;t keep up! You can clearly see I am pointing at the elbone."

High pencils and lovely ladies

I wonder why the pencil sharpener (or was it a chalk sharpener?)was mounted that high?

But that aside, I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the nursing profession. I've only ever stayed in hospital once (so far!) as an adult - emergency appendectomy at age 53 - and fell in love with every one of the (female) nursing staff who tended me. They care about caring.

The Student Bodies

A wonderful Army nurse stopped some bleeding on me as a teenaged Marine 44 years ago and all I have to say as a fellow getting on in years is that I love all these bodies. These gals were on a mission to relieve suffering and I tip my cap to them although I understand I'm saluting the past.

That's Progress?

Wow, I remember those clean-cut outfits nurses once wore. Nowadays you can't tell the nurses from any person off-the-street walking through the hospital.

Lesson one

The head bone's connected to the neck bone, the neck bone's connected to the shoulder bone ...

They're all going to die from that mold on the wall anyway.

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