Agnes Vetch

Agnes Vetch (1842 to 1942) was a Scottish nurse born in Edinburgh. In 1874 she entered the first cohort of the Nurse Training School at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, trained in the tradition of Florence Nightingale, and was placed in charge of a male ward the day after she qualified in 1875. In 1876 she went with five other nurses to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington as a sister, part of an effort to promote the Nightingale system, and later returned to Edinburgh. After visiting her brother, a medical missionary in China, she went to Japan in 1887 and taught nursing at the First Hospital of the Imperial University Medical School in Tokyo, where 28 students graduated under her instruction in 1888. She is credited with helping to introduce Nightingale-style nursing education to Japan. She then continued nursing in Australia, met Robert Louis Stevenson, and died in Edinburgh at the age of about 100.