36 The Hospital Requirements of Sydney. 



length the question of nursing, but simply to give our opinions on 

 certain points in regard to it — which have impressed themselves 

 upon us in the course of our inquiry. 



" 1. "We need perhaps scarcely express the opinion, that nurses 

 of civil hospitals (except possibly in certain special cases) ought 

 to be women. The peculiar instincts and moral qualities of the 

 female mind especially adapt women for ministering to the wants 

 of the sick. 



" 2. The duties which nurses have to perform are important 

 duties, and ought only to be entrusted to women of certain 

 character of mind. A fish-fag, a hawker, or any person habituated 

 to a coarse or debasing kind of life, is evidently neither by edu- 

 cation nor habit fitted to become a nurse. 



" 3. But neither is every women of refinement suited to fulfil 

 the functions of a nurse. She may have a dislike to the work, 

 and, if so, can scarcely be expected to carry it out promptly ; or 

 she may be devoid of some of those special feminine attributes 

 which combine to constitute the thorough nurse. 



"4. No woman, however admirably adapted by nature to be a 

 nurse she may be, can be an efficient nurse without some experi- 

 ence, or some special training. 



" Assuming the truth of what has just been asserted, assuming 

 also (what is in fact unquestionable) that competent nurses are 

 required in large numbers by hospitals and infirmaries throughout 

 the whole of Great Britian, we arrive strongly at the opinions. 



" 1st. That nurses should be especially educated. It is only of 

 ]ate years that medical men have been required to undergo a course 

 of instruction in a hospital ; aud at the present time it is acknow- 

 ledged that no man is competent to act as a physician or surgeon 

 who has not been specially educated for the purpose ; and further, 

 that no large hospital is efficiently worked without it has associated 

 with it a class of medical students. All this is applicable to the 

 question of nursing. Nurses have not, it is true, been hitherto 

 specially educated ; but they ought to be educated ; they ought to 

 be educated in hospitals, where alone they can have adequate in- 

 struction ; and we are satisfied that this course, sysvematically 

 pursued, will gradually tend to elevate the character and position 

 of nurses, and that a school of nurses will bring with it to the 

 institution to which it is attached analogous advantages to those 

 which accrue from a school for the education of medical pupils. 

 The Nightingale Fund has, for two or three years past, been 

 partly expended in a system of educating nurses at St. Thomas's 

 Hospital. The plan has succeeded admirably well in that institu- 

 tion ; and we are bound to add that in the course of our visits to 

 the provincial hospitals we frequently met with nurses who had 

 received their education there, and we were invariably assured 

 that these nurses were in all respects far above the average 



