782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them in other people's houses wrinkled prematurely, thinned out 

 by temper, contrary by nature, or for the most part fattened in the 

 course of their (to them) useful career, complacent, and drowsy while 

 everything was going well, incompetent and snappish when danger 

 required work and sufficiency, always ready to have their regular 

 meals served up-stairs by the help of the house, who breathed freely 

 when they finally left, and always willing to spend their time between 

 rocking a baby, speaking of their long experience, sleeping ten hours, 

 talking gossip all day long, and drinking eleven cups of coffee in the 

 twenty-four hours. This is hardly an exaggeration, for the number 

 of women who took up nursing as a business, driven to it by some 

 natural disposition, gifted with some intellect, modest and willing to 

 profit by superior knowledge and experience, interested in the welfare 

 of their patients, and never stunted in their human feelings by the 

 force of habit, was rather small. But I am glad to say I knew such, 

 too. I gladly shook their hands when I happened to meet them on a 

 common errand, gladly recognizing the diploma they carried in their 

 brains and hearts. But these exceptions proved the rule, and the rule* 

 conveyed no blessing. It was, it is, a sad fact that nursing all over 

 the world grew worse in just the same time when medical science grew 

 more exact and medical practice more effective. 



Relief in this city came none too soon. The president has detailed 

 to you the history of the training-schools of New York. Since their 

 time the practice in hospitals and in pi'ivate dwellings has changed 

 wonderfully. After thirty years' work in the city, after twenty-five 

 years' constant labor in public institutions, I ought to know the dif- 

 ference. And I do know and publicly proclaim that the results of the 

 best of physicians have vastly improved since their cases have been in 

 the hands of trained nurses. This is so in private dwellings ; it is the 

 same in hospitals. In the hospitals the difference can be measured on a 

 large scale. In them the trained nurse has worked a vast improvement. 



Every large hospital ought to perform a doxxble duty. It must 

 give the poor patient, and many rich also, the best possible chance of 

 recovery from sickness. It can afford to accomplish that, because of 

 its pecuniary and intellectual means. Though a hospital be poor, 

 there ought to be, there generally are, means enough to fill all the ne- 

 cessities required. And the intellectual means are expected, are sup- 

 posed to be, above the average of the general practitioner. There are 

 a great many reasons why that should be so, why hospital places 

 should be open for the competition of the best material among the med- 

 ical profession, recognized to be the best by the medical profession 

 itself, and why family and personal influence should not fill places 

 which are better not filled at all than with indifferent or bad material. 

 A hospital must also grant the best possible nursing attached, wake- 

 ful, careful. All this is due to the single patients. 



A good deal more, however, is due to the public at large. A hos- 



