[The history of medical nursing schools at the Vienna University (1812 to 1846) and at the Royal Charité Hospital in Berlin since 1832].

The first examples of nurse training, beginning in Vienna in 1812 and in Berlin in 1832, demonstrate that research in nursing-history must explore primary sources which are still in existence, in order to counteract current cliche and perhaps even develop completely new insights into historical accounts. Nursing literature in Austria did not start will the textbook by Billroth (1st edition 1881), but with the textbook by Maximilian Florian Schmidt, same publisher, 50 years earlier. His professorship was not held in the University but in what would not be a technical school. The textbook by Schmidt, and not that by Franz Anton Mai (1782), provided the submission for the curriculum which Dieffenbach made available to the school opened in Berlin in 1832. Dieffenbach was given the title of "Professor" for his services to "the improvement of nursing" and not for his pioneer work in plastic and orthopedic surgery. It was not Dieffenbach's curriculum but the 1837 revision of the work of Gedike, who was not a pupil of Dieffenbach's, which was used by the ministery responsible for the Board of Trustees of the hospital, for the state controlled course of nursing education. This educational programme was not less optional than that statutorily controlled one from 1907 onwards.