There are references to nursing care in the city hospital and other places of healing in Vienna dating back to the thirteenth century, and official documents refer to the nursing activities of the Brothers of Charity in Austria in 1614. Somewhat later they record the activities of the Elizabethan sisters, and finally of a number of Catholic religious orders who were active in hospital and public health work in those distant days. The first well-known Austrian school of nursing was founded in 1882 by the great surgeon, Professor Theodor Billroth, in the Rudolfinerhaus in Vienna, where a hospital was established for the purpose of giving the students a complete theoretical and practical training. Since the turn of the century, schools have been established in the big Viennese state hospitals, which today are administered by the county of Vienna, and in the remaining eight provinces of Austria. Basic minimum requirements for the establishment of a nursing school were set up by the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1913. They were revised in 1949 and other revisions are being considered at this time. One of these requirements is that the school must