women who have to work for their bread, and the over-stocking of many departments of female industry, it seems surprising that this, wThich is so esjecially women’s work, should be done so scantily and so badly. As sanitary inquiries have been pursued further and further, it has been discovered more and more plainly that a vast amount of needless death hap] tens from bad nursing. We are told that in order to reduce the preventable mortality we must (among other things) improve our hospitals; and, in order to improve our hospitals, we must improve our nurses. While many of them are diseased and infirm; while more are intemperate, and not a few loose in conduct and character; and while they are under overwhelming temptations to make a profit of their patients and their place, there can be no effectual check to the needless mortality within the hospitals. One result of such discoveries has been to create the enthusiasm which we have witnessed of late years in the cause of good nursing. Florence Nightingale did not wait for the outburst of an enthusiasm on any hand. For many long years she had been working in silence, under a growing sense of the necessity. She had been learning the art, and putting her knowledge in practice as she advanced, so that when, under the pressure of the war, there was a sudden rush of devotees into the vocation, there was a womau ready to guide the movement, and to lay open the case to the steady good sense of society, precisely when good sense was most in danger of being swamped by the mixture of a romantic egotism with a gush of genuine benevolence. Through her we know something of what it really is to nurse the sick, and of what is wanted to plant good nursing effectually between the sick-bed and the grave.
There is no subject on which it is easier to be romantic than that of nursing. It is natural and fitting that the tender and even picturesque aspect of the office should fix the attention of observers: only, when it comes to reforming the institution, the whole truth must be studied. It is pretty to see a little child nursing poor mamma’s foot when poor mamma’s head aches; and one feels a respect for young ladies who aspire to undertake the work of a Sister of Charity: but the little child’s nursing, though it need not be discouraged, will not cure mamma: and the well-intentioned assistant must go through a severe probation before she may venture to regard herself as a Sister of Charity. The imaginative benevolence and piety which may find their proper training and final use in some other department of action, are usually out of place in the hospital; and it really appears that there is as much trouble with floating saints and virgins on the one hand, as with grovelling mercenaries on the other. As for the minority of able and devoted women who stand between or far above them, they are of a value which can scarcely be matched among women. If we look at them, we shall no more see them gliding about in silk, or floating in muslin, or disguised in a hideous nun’s uniform, and lecturing their patients on heavenly things by the hour together, or exchanging spiritual confidences with fevered sufferers, than we shall see them drinking gin behind a bed-curtain, or taking a bribe from a visitor. Some documents are lying before me, which show what we shall find the best nurses really doing. To observe them in their proper sphere, we must imagine the best managed hospital that we can ever hope to see.
It is not every woman who desires it, or is worthy of it, that can be a professional nurse. She must have a degree of bodily soundness and vigour which is not common; for her work is not only very hard, but it keeps her standing and stooping for many hours of every day. The successful nurse must have ascertained, before she declares herself a candidate, that she can stand and stoop to the required extent without injury. She must have stout limbs and sharp senses. We know well enough what it is to have a nurse who is purblind, or hard of hearing, or insensible to bad tastes and smells.
Next, what is to be the relative position of the candidate? Is she to be mistress or servant, does she suppose? “Servant, of course,” she replies. Very true: but has she considered what it is to be a servant in so strict a sense as in a hospital? She must have no ideas and no will of her own about medical treatment. Instant, constant, complete, silent obedience to the physician’s orders is her very first duty. Does she suppose this to be at all times easy? Whether entitled by a special education, or prepossessed by ignorance, she can hardly help having notions about the cases under her hands; and it must be difficult at times to yield to a questionable order without a word spoken. Yet there can be no freedom to question an order in a hospital, though there might be an opening for discussion in a private house. Again: there is no choice of hours, or of work, or of methods. All is fixed and settled; and she has only to put herself under the working of the machinery of her office. Every day has its routine— every hour its proper work: what change and recreation can be allowed are out of the house: there can be no controversy, religious or other, with colleagues; and there must be no petting of patients. This is with some the hardest piece of self-denial of all: but duty requires it. The aim is to get the patients well. That is what a hospital is for. In the vast majority of cases of illness, a vegetative mode of life, monotonous, material, calm and quiet, is as essential as it is to the youngest infant; and this is the reason why physicians dread, as they do, the introduction of sentiment and sentimental women into hospitals. The religious care of the patients belongs to the chaplain, or the pastors, who may visit patients from their flock: and, women once admitted to any other functions than ministering, under orders, to the bodily needs of the sufferers, there would soon be an end to the expansion of the profession at all, and to all chance of women having the special hospital-education which it is the great aim at present to obtain for them. It does not follow that the nurse must be mute, hard, and unsympathising. True sympathy shows itself otherwise than by talk and tears. Whatever is done may be done gently and tenderly. Mere vigilance, without
words, is often the most acceptable form of sympathy to a sufferer; and two words of pity, or of