And what
nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best
condition for nature to act upon him. Generally, just the contrary is
done. You think fresh air, and quiet and cleanliness extravagant,
perhaps dangerous, luxuries, which should be given to the patient only
when quite convenient, and medicine the _sine qua non_, the panacea. If
I have succeeded in any measure in dispelling this illusion, and in
showing what true nursing is, and what it is not, my object will have
been answered.
Now for the caution:--
(3.) It seems a commonly received idea among men and even among women
themselves that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the
want of an object, a general disgust, or incapacity for other things, to
turn a woman into a good nurse.
This reminds one of the parish where a stupid old man was set to be
schoolmaster because he was "past keeping the pigs."
Apply the above receipt for making a good nurse to making a good
servant. And the receipt will be found to fail.
Yet popular novelists of recent days have invented ladies disappointed
in love or fresh out of the drawing-room turning into the war-hospitals
to find their wounded lovers, and when found, forthwith abandoning their
sick-ward for their lover, as might be expected.
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