women who sit at home over the easy occupations of ordinary life. On the one hand, the vice is always trying to establish itself; on the other, it is impossible to tolerate it in a hospital; and the thing to be done is to keep watch against it, and to substitute for it generous diet.
Our nurse's clothing must be ample. There can be no shutting out the air, and keeping up the fire in a hospital, where the principle is to have such bedding, clothing, and equable warmth provided as shall allow of free admission of fresh air at all times. The nurse must therefore be so warmly clothed as not to suffer in winter days, or in night-watches, in going about her ward.
These are her personal arrangements; each of them important as involving her health and strength. As for her business, it is a very regular affair, except in as far as her deep interest in her work may introduce diversities. A high authority exhorts the hospital -matron not to worry if a day-nurse is seen sitting up with a bad case when, as the matron would say, she ought to be in bed. As a general thing, however, the nurse should have her eight hours’ sleep, as well as two hours a-day for recreation, and two more for meals and her personal business. When the true quality and value of a nurse are understood, she will not be employed to do what others can do as well. Therefore our nurse is not to be seen bringing in water, lighting fires, or scrubbing the floor. She sees that everything is ready at first, and then enters upon her duty to the patients. She helps those who cannot wash themselves, and makes all clean and pure from bed to bed. She serves the first doses of medicine for the day, the list of which hangs up where the doctor and she can easily refer to it. To give the medicine punctually and accurately is of course one of her first duties; and she trusts nobody with it. At breakfast time, the meals are brought to the ward, as the dinners are, ready divided and hot, so that her time is not consumed in dividing — much less in weighing — the food.
The arrival of the doctors is prepared for by her being ready to report on each case, and her having ready any questions she may have to ask. She makes her words as few as possible. She has her own slate or book in which to enter orders or questions: and her manner checks the thoughtless students (supposing them present) when they are noisy or obtrusive, to the discomfort of the patients. By the time the medical rounds are over, and the offices ordered by the doctors are fulfilled, it is time to prepare for dinner. She encourages those who are well enough to rise, and sit at table; and she tries to make a cheerfid fireside for as many as can sit up during the afternoon. She altogether prohibits any such illicit indulgence as a pipe in a closet, or pastry or drink brought by visitors; while she encourages cheerful amusement in every way. She has the beds made, the linen changed, the night-lights in order, and everything quiet by the prescribed hour, when she yields her place to the night nurse.
All this may be easy and almost pleasant to the reader; but it is the mere framework of hospital life. The filling-in is the part to study. Among twenty, thirty, or more sufferers, there is no day which can pass over smoothly and without anxiety." The child that cries aloud for half the day would wear out many a woman’s nerves: and then there is the moaning of people in pain, and the restlessness of the feverish, and the raving of the delirious. There are wounds and sores to be attended to; and many disagreeable things to be done; and usually, among so many patients, some on any particular day who seem not to be doing well. The toil is never-ceasing; the anxiety always besetting; the wpear and tear in every way very great.
On the other hand, good nursing decides the fate of thousands of persons every year, for recovery or death. In badly managed hospitals there are epidemic periods when erysipelas, hospital-gangrene, cholera, and fever carry off the patients just as if they were living in a blind alley full of bad smells and stagnant filth; but, as a general rule, people who go into hospitals come out convalescent: and if the arts of the hospital were spread over private life, the number of deaths from other causes than old age and vice would be wonderfully reduced. A well -trained body of ten thousand nurses, working during only their years of utmost vigour, would do more to extinguish preventible death than the twenty thousand haphazard tow’n and country nurses, old and young, set down as professional in the census returns. What the actual need is may be judged of by the existence of the Nightingale Fund; by the number of ladies wrho volunteered to go to the East during the Russian w ar; by the institutions which are springing up in various parts of the country; and by the tentative conversation of young ladies who meditate devoting themselves to the work. How to meet the need, is the question.
It must always be right to develop all existing capabilities in private life. In every household let little children show what they are made of. One will mount a chair, and stare into your mouth to see a tooth drawn, while another will run out of the house when the dentist comes in. One will faint at the sight of blood, while another likes to bind up a bad cut. Why should not the natural doctor and nurse have a free career? There will always be plenty to run away from it. Let little children be allowed and encouraged to soothe and help the sick. Let them learn to sit quiet, to move about quietly, to stir the fire with a stick, to chafe limbs properly, to make a bed properly, and change linen in the easiest way; to air rooms, to darken windows, and to make and serve sick messes. These things can be learned and practised at an early age; and the process will certainly show what Nature intends as to a supply of nurses.
The material thus indicated, what is the instruction to be? At Madras, the orphan daughters of British soldiers are educated at the Military Asylum, where the elder ones who show themselves fit for the service are trained as nurses, and always diligently sought. Married or single, they are always busy. As their fathers battled in the field of warfare, so do they in that of disease; and they are the most effective soldiers in the world.
Not only in India, but everywhere, does disease lay low its victims more painfully and more plentifully than any war that ever was waged. We