66 ADOBE. BRICK & STEEL
Nurses and Midwives
Nursing services were not a part of the earliest Sacra mento hospitals, nor were these services common anywhere. It was not until the Crimean War (1855-1856) that Florence Nightingale pioneered modem nursing and began to make it respectable. Probably the first Sacramento hospital to employ nurses was the Central Pacific Railroad Hospital, 1869, and these early nurses were male. Although the Sisters of Mercy came to Sacramento in 1857 to serve the needy and sick, it was not until 1895 that they took over the Ridge Home at 22nd and R Streets, a building originally donated by Mrs. E. B. Crocker for the care of elderly women. Later the Ridge Home was operated by pioneer physician G. L. Simmons, M.D., who encouraged and financed the takeover. Volunteers and practical nurses served the patients. When the Sisters built a larger hospital, Mater Misericordiae at 23rd and R Streets, they became the first Community of Sisters in California to offer a program in nursing education. Four students entered the first class in 1897. Louise Igo, a graduate nurse from San Francisco, took over the class. Later, in 1906, she received her medical degree from the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. She returned in 1910 to her own hospital in Sacramento at 1525 L Street. Eventually she married a man named Flitcroft and the Igo-Flitcroft Hospital at 3014 M Street was open until 1927. In 1925, the Nursing School of the Sisters of Mercy moved to more spacious quarters at 40th and J where the new
