Who was the first male nurse?

In Rome, in the third century, there was an organization of men called the Parabolani brotherhood that provided care to the sick and dying during the great plague in Alexandria. During the crusades, groups of men known as Knighthood orders, such as the Knights Hospitalers of St.John of Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights, and the Knights of Larzarus, comprised of brothers in arms who provided nursing care to their sick and injured comrades. These orders were responsible for building, organizing and managing great hospitals, setting a standard for the administration of hospitals (predominantly in the battlefield) in Europe at the time.

Another male group, the Alexian Brotherhood, was organized in 1431. Knighthood orders of the Middle Ages combined religion, chivalry, militarism, and charity. Their original purpose was to carry the wounded from the battlefield and to provide care.

Seventy years before the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Fray (Faiar) Juan de Mena was shipwrecked off the south Texas Coast. He is the first identified nurse in what was to become the United States.

In the middle 1800鈥檚 the United States was embroiled in the Civil War. Both the Confederate and Union Army had males serving as nurses although we only hear about the Union volunteers, who were predominately female. The Confederate Army had assigned thirty men in each regiment to care for the wounded. This could have been the start to the modern Combat Medic of today. The Union also had males designated as nurses or serving as such. 鈥淪ee Walt Whitman below鈥? In the year 1808, Lazaro Orranti and Martin Ortega were two men that were employed as nurses at a hospital in San Antonio. The hospital employed only men as nurse. A Century later a sign above the door to the San Antonio hospital nurse quarters said 鈥淓ntrance to No Mans Land.鈥?/div>

• 10 months ago

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