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Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1920

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

I have seen surgical "sisters," women whose hands were worth to
them two or three guineas a-week, down upon their knees scouring a room
or hut, because they thought it otherwise not fit for their patients to
go into. I am far from wishing nurses to scour. It is a waste of power.
But I do say that these women had the true nurse-calling--the good of
their sick first, and second only the consideration what it was their
"place" to do--and that women who wait for the housemaid to do this, or
for the charwoman to do that, when their patients are suffering, have
not the _making_ of a nurse in them.
[7]
[Sidenote: Health of carriages.]
The health of carriages, especially close carriages, is not of
sufficient universal importance to mention here, otherwise than
cursorily. Children, who are always the most delicate test of sanitary
conditions, generally cannot enter a close carriage without being
sick--and very lucky for them that it is so. A close carriage, with the
horse-hair cushions and linings always saturated with organic matter, if
to this be added the windows up, is one of the most unhealthy of human
receptacles.


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