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Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1920

"Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not"

The remedies are just as well known; and
among them is certainly not the establishment of a Child's Hospital.
This may be a want; just as there may be a want of hospital room for
adults. But the Registrar-General would certainly never think of giving
us as a cause for the high rate of child mortality in (say) Liverpool
that there was not sufficient hospital room for children; nor would he
urge upon us, as a remedy, to found a hospital for them.
Again, women, and the best women, are wofully deficient in sanitary
knowledge; although it is to women that we must look, first and last,
for its application, as far as _household_ hygiene is concerned. But who
would ever think of citing the institution of a Women's Hospital as the
way to cure this want?
We have it, indeed, upon very high authority that there is some fear
lest hospitals, as they have been _hitherto_, may not have generally
increased, rather than diminished, the rate of mortality--especially of
child mortality.
[2]
[Sidenote: Why are uninhabited rooms shut up?]
The common idea as to uninhabited rooms is, that they may safely be left
with doors, windows, shutters, and chimney board, all
closed--hermetically sealed if possible--to keep out the dust, it is
said; and that no harm will happen if the room is but opened a short
hour before the inmates are put in.


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