cheerfulness, or uttered in the spirit of fortitude, may rouse or charm more than any exhortation.
The nurse has to see a constant succession of patients going out and coming in, so that the scene might well weary out the most elastic imagination and the most patient heart. I have said nothing of the spectacle of ghastly wounds and sores, of the long waiting upon fever, of the moans and cries of anguish, and the dreary weeping of the worn-out sufferers. It is to be assumed that the nurse has ascertained that she can bear these sights and sounds. It is a matter of course that she can; and also that she is free from the prudery which is somewhat in the way of benevolent action wherever it exists, and is wholly incompatible with the nursing office.
Supposing all these conditions to be satisfactorily met, what is the life led by a good nurse?
In the London hospitals there are two classes of female nurses: the Matrons and Sisters constituting the first, and the Nurses (sometimes subdivided into day and night nurses) the other. If ladies choose to enter either class without pay, in any future scheme, there must be no notice taken of the difference; but the unpaid must be subject to precisely the same regulations as the salaried. Neither money nor religious vocation can be allowed to confer privilege while the object is to obtain the largest possible number of respectable, healthy, sensible women of the working-class, in return for a fair maintenance; that is, on the footing which is generally found to be the most steady and workable. At the moment when new sewing machinery is demolishing occupations which had long ceased to afford a maintenance, a new profession is opening to women, through the extension of our sanitary knowledge; and the system must be adapted to the professional members first. The volunteers and amateurs must take their place under it as they can.
It is found that, as paid nurses, widows with children are ineligible. If they do not love their children they are unfit to be nurses; and, if they do, they must be for ever pulled two ways. The cases of peculation and trickery thus arising are numerous, but not at all to be wondered at. The nurses had better be single women, or widows without children. It is part of the romance of the enterprise with some people to introduce penitents to the wards; but this is reprobated by all experienced managers of hospitals. It is all important to respect the corps of each hospital, and to keep up their self-respect. There must be no damaged character amongst them, for the sake of the sound. If there is any of the old leaven left, this is the place and the work to bring it out; and if the reform be complete, the penitent must have too much disquietude, self -distrust, and egotism stirring within to be fit for an office singularly requiring robustness and simplicity of nature and habit. Penitents can find works of mercy always wanting to be done in every track trodden by human feet; they need not come to the public hospital, while there are so many private sick chambers; and it must be plainly said that they cannot be admitted.
Our good nurse must then be a single woman, say of the working-class, and about thirty years of age; sound in health, and well disposed for her work, — with a calm, cheerful manner, but with a glow within which we should call enthusiasm, while she is not aware that it has, or ought to have, any name. As we are supposing her in a well-organised hospital, she is trained for her office.
The time is at hand, the money is in the bank, and the plan is under discussion, for the training of young women in the art of nursing; so we may look forward to the accomplished fact. She will have learned what the structure of the human frame is, in a general way; where the great organs lie, and how they ought to act. She will have learned how health is affected by food, clothing, cleanliness, exercise, and free ventilation. She will have been taught how to put on a bandage in the various cases required; how to manage leeches and other applications, and how to prepare the commonest sick-diets; and how to act in emergencies,— of bleeding, fainting, convulsions, inflammation, choleraic attacks, &c., till the doctor comes.
Thus fitted for her work, she enters upon it with the full knowledge that hospital -nurses have to undergo a period of discouragement, during which many feel that they must get out of it at any cost. An experienced reader will know what is meant by the hospital languor which comes over the nurse, after a time, like a sick dream. It is easily accounted for; and the only object in adverting to it, is to point out that it is a common trial which the nurses have to undergo, and which good nurses get over, by spirit and prudence. She does what is possible to secure an easy mind and a disengaged spirit by availing herself of some one of the safe methods of assurance, within or without the hospital, by which a certain deduction from her pay will secure her the means of retiring before she is quite worn out. She will further make a point of laying by something, so as to have the power of taking a complete holiday, however short, when she needs change of air and rest. There are consultations on foot as to these matters — as to methods of insurance, and of making savings from the wages of nurses, on the one hand, or pensioning them on the other.
The economy must not be too close. A nurse must be well clothed, and thoroughly well fed. If she provides her own food she considers it a duty to sustain her strength by substantial meat dinners, with good beer; and if her meals are provided by the hospital, she steadily demands what- ever is necessary to enable her to discharge her fatiguing duties effectually. The hope of those who are consulting about making the most of nurses, is that a plan will become general by which there shall be in every hospital a mess for the nurses, managed by the matron.
The most wasteful of all plans, as to food and time, is for each nurse to buy and cook her own meals, and eat them alone; and it certainly would seem to people generally that sitting down to a joint and pudding would be more cheerful and comfortable than each woman fiddle-faddling at her own bit of dinner. An open, honest, sufficient allowance of good ale or porter is essential if the curse of hospitals — intemperance — is to be
successfully dealt with. The temptations to spirit-drinking are stronger than can be conceived by