AND PREVENTION OF PHTHISIS. 421 



years, while later on it vanishes altogether. The reason 

 of this is, that the older nurses are gradually withdrawn 

 from the heavier duties of their position and the at- 

 tendant danger of infection. 



In these hospitals, deaths from typhus and other 

 infectious disorders exhibit a frequency far beyond 

 the normal; but the enormous total augmentation is 

 mainly to be ascribed to the frequency of deaths from 

 tuberculosis. The excess of mortality is to be referred 

 to the vocation of nursing, and the chances of infection 

 involved in it. Cornet examines other assumptions 

 that might be made to account for the mortality, and 

 gives cogent reasons for dismissing them all. The 

 tranquil lives led by the nurses, the freedom from all 

 anxiety in regard to subsistence, the moderation ob- 

 served in food and drink, all tend to the preservation 

 of health. They live in peace, free from the irregula- 

 rities of outside life, and their contentment and cir- 

 cumstances generally are calculated rather to prolong 

 their days than to shorten them. 



Cornet is very warm in his recognition of the devo- 

 tion of these Catholic nurses, two-thirds of whom are 

 sacrificed in the service which they render to suffering 

 humanity. And they are sacrificed for the most part 

 in the blossom of their years; for it is the younger 

 nurses, engaged in the work of sweeping and dusting, 

 whose occupation charges the air they breathe with 

 virulent bacilli. The statistics of their mortality Cor- 

 net regards as a monumental record of their lofty 

 self-denial, their noble, beneficent, and modest fidelity 

 to what they regard as the religious duty of their 

 lives. 



But, he asks, is it necessary that this sacrifice should 

 continue? His answer is an emphatic negative, to 

 establish which he again sums up the results which we 



