MODERN NURSING. 7 8 3 



pital looking for the interest of the single patient only might just as 

 well be a private institution, a maison de sante for the benefit of a 

 landlord. The benefit derived from hospital treatment by a sick per- 

 son is not all the satisfaction due to a public who pay four hundred 

 dollars a year for every bed. Nor are the public paid sufficiently for 

 their sacrifices by the accumulated experiences of a few physicians, who 

 enjoy the large field of observation and the opportunity of utilizing it 

 for the benefit of private patients. Every hospital which neglects to 

 increase the stock of medical knowledge, and to give an opportunity 

 of learning the theory and practice of nursing and caring for the sick, 

 performs its duties but half, and serves the public but incompletely. 

 Every large hospital must be, and will be, a clinical school, and a 

 school for nurses. It will be acknowledged that as the presence of a 

 nurse in a sick-ward, who is sent there to learn, is considered unobjec- 

 tionable, the presence of a few physicians observing a case, which can 

 not be injured by their so doing, is not only not injurious, but ought 

 to be demanded by the public, who have a right to expect a physician 

 in their own families who has seen and knows and understands what 

 he is called in to treat. I do not see why hospital patients only should 

 have the best money and service can afford, and why the public at large 

 should have to fall back in many cases on untried skill. Thus the people 

 have a right to demand that every large hospital should have a clinical 

 school, and a training-school for nurses. The public, who are willing 

 to pay for it, may also demand that the expenses of the same, particu- 

 larly the nurses' school, should be borne by the hospital. This de- 

 mand, if considered theoretical only, must stand as long as a hospital 

 is, or claims to be, a public institution. When the board of directors 

 of any institution will recognize that they are not the administrators 

 of the dollars of a small concern, but the benefactors of the public at 

 large, they will also appreciate not only that a few disinterested ladies 

 will open their pocket-books, and collect voluntary contributions, but 

 that a generous public will pay more willingly and more largely. 



The demand that a large hospital should be a clinical school and a 

 school for nurses, and that the expense should or might be borne by 

 the institution, is not^ valid in the case of city or commonwealth hos- 

 pitals only. Most of the hospitals of the country are originally pri- 

 vate institutions. They obtain the character of being public affairs 

 when an always increasing number of men and women become inter- 

 ested in and contributors to them. An institution with one or two 

 thousand paying members represents ten or twenty thousand families 

 in fact, represents a city. And what it represents, of that it assumes 

 the rights and duties. And the main duty the public at large will 

 soon know how to enforce from the directors of every large hospital 

 is, to administer the public domain to the greatest possible advantage 

 for the greatest possible number. The selfishness of an individual 

 adversary, the animosity of evil-spirited persons will never weigh, 



