Charlotte Albina Aikens

“ Their disease may make them irritable, captious even, sometimes, repulsive. These people need more than ordinary everyday good qualities in a nurse. They need one who, over and above her professional ability, looks upon her work as a vocation, ‘a calling by the will of God.’ It was that spirit which made the best of the pioneers of other days what they were. Nursing was undertaken by them as a definite life-work. ”

“ Her studious avoidance of honors of all kinds, her purity of motive, the absolute lack of self-seeking, of honor, prestige or profit for herself, her courage, tact and quiet perseverance are qualities on which nurses of the twentieth century may wisely meditate. Nothing is more needed among nurses today, than that her spirit, her ideals of life and character, may be perpetuated. Few of us can render any greater service to our generation than to exert ourselves to keep her spirit alive in the nursing profession. ”

“ His methods demanded the trained nurse both for surgery and midwifery, both for the battlefield where life is destroyed, and for the lying-in room where it is ushered into separate existence. Her work was to provide the training and the principles, the ideals, the enthusiasm, and the tiniest, humblest details, whereby the modern nurse is made. ”

“ One criticism which is often heard of present day nurses in training is that they so quickly get into ruts in the matter of observation—that they see so much in a hospital ward which they fail to perceive—that they fail to gather practical knowledge pertaining to their work which is all around them waiting to be picked up. If Florence Nightingale had been the type of woman who had to have all the nursing knowledge which she obtained duly imparted to her by somebody else appointed for that purpose, her influence on the conditions which then prevailed would have been small indeed. ”

“ In every age, the world has had its heroes, and Florence Nightingale would have been the last to wish to give the impression that there were not many splendid women devoting themselves to the care of the sick long before she was born. They were not trained women according to modern ideals of training, but there were women of gentle birth and breeding, refined and accomplished who served the sick with singleness of heart and rare devotion. ”

“ I have often thought how wise a piece of education this would be for higher objects; and in our calling of nurses the thing itself is essential. For it may safely be said not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.”
“It seems a commonly received idea among men and even among women themselves that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the want of an object, a general disgust, or incapacity for other things, to turn a woman into a good nurse. ”

“ When in later years she expressed herself as follows, she was simply expressing the convictions which had been with her all through life:
“Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, it requires as hard preparation as is required for any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is having to do with dead canvas or cold marble compared with caring for the living body?” ”

“ The everyday management of a large ward let alone of a hospital—the knowing what are the laws of life and death for men and what the laws of health for wards—are not these matters of sufficient importance and difficulty to require learning by experience and careful inquiry, just as much as any other art? ”

“ Cleanliness and fresh air from open windows with unremitting attention to the patient, are the only defence a true nurse either needs or asks.”
“The very first canon of nursing, the first and the last thing upon which a nurse’s attention must be fixed, the first essential to a patient, without which all the rest you can do for him is as nothing, with which I had almost said you may leave all the rest alone, is this: To keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him.” ”

“ Among the indispensable qualities for successful nursing, we place “TACT” very close to the top of the list. To get along with people without friction, to get needful things done without arousing antagonism, to have that keenness of perception, that ready power of appreciating and of doing or saying what is most fitting under the circumstances; to maintain, withal, that quality of mind which enables one to see the humorous side to otherwise difficult situations, are qualities to be coveted by every nurse. ”

“ What would you think of a soldier who, if he were put on duty in the honorable post of difficulty, as sentry, may be, in the face of the enemy (and we nurses are always in the face of the enemy, always in the life and death of our patients) —were to answer his commanding officer, ‘No, he had rather mount guard at the barracks or study musketry;’ or if he had to go as pioneer, or on a forlorn hope, were to say, ‘no that don’t suit my turn’. ”

“ You have no idea what the craving of sick with undiminished power of thinking, but little power of doing, is to hear of good practical action, when they can no longer partake in it.”
“The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe—how to observe—what symptoms indicate improvement—what the reverse—which are of importance—which are of none—which are the evidence of neglect—and of what kind of neglect. All this is what ought to make part, and an essential part, of the training of every nurse.” ”

“ To have failed in appreciation of the part her assistant nurses played, during the excitement of wartime conditions, would have been easy and, to a degree, excusable—but she did not fail. To take the whole credit for achievement to oneself is a very human failing, but it was not one of Florence Nightingale’s failings. ”

“ The caution may seem useless, but it is quite surprising how many men (some women do it too) , practically behave as if the scientific end were the only one in view, or as if the sick body were but a reservoir for stowing medicines into, and the surgical disease only a curious case the sufferer has made for the attendant’s special information.”
“Pathology teaches the harm that disease has done. But it teaches nothing more. We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. ”

“ In this she has a worthy example for forgetfulness of self seems to have been characteristic of Florence Nightingale all through her life. Service to humanity—especially service to the sick and distressed part of humanity—seems to have made its strong appeal to her almost from childhood. Organization for service, education and training for service, plans for service in a hundred different ways—filled her life, and the story of her many-sided activities, as revealed by her official biographer—has been a surprise to those who have thought of her only in connection with nursing. ”

“ As one looks back over her wonderful life and tries to discern the secret of her remarkable influence, one cannot but feel that the spirit in which she did her work, her absolute devotion to the cause to which she was giving her best powers, accounts in large measure for her name being honored, and her memory kept green all over the civilized world. ”

“ What is training? Training is to teach the nurse to help the patient to live. Nursing the sick is an art and an art requiring an organized practical and scientific training; for nursing is the skilled servant of medicine, surgery and hygiene. A good nurse of twenty years ago had not to do the twentieth part of what she is required by her physician or surgeon to do now; and so after the year’s training she must be still training under instruction in her first and even second year’s hospital service. ”

“ Sixty odd years ago, at the outbreak of the Crimean war there were no women nurses to minister to those who had been wounded in the service of their country. Woman’s ministry was sorely needed but not wanted by those in active command of military affairs at the seat of war. It remained for Florence Nightingale to teach the world one of its greatest lessons—a lesson from which future generations will reap increasing benefits. When the Crimean war closed, the foundation was begun on which the structure of modern nursing was to be reared. ”

“ The presence of thousands of daughters of Florence Nightingale in the regions devastated by the great world war, and the great service to humanity which they have rendered, have turned the thoughts of many to that other battlefield where the great need of the world for trained nurses was first impressed on the hearts of the people—an impression never to be effaced while there are suffering human beings requiring skilled care and service. ”

“ Their estimate of their own ability is often much greater than conditions justify; they often want the best positions without paying the price of special skill. The determination of Florence Nightingale to secure for herself the best instruction the world afforded at that time, and her conviction that if she was ever to accomplish anything worth while she must first learn all that was possible under the circumstances for her to learn about the business of caring for the sick, is a fine example for those who really desire to do worth while things in this world. ”

“ In dwelling upon the vital importance of sound observation, it must never be lost sight of what observation is for. It is not for the sake of piling up miscellaneous information or curious facts, but for the sake of saving life and increasing health and comfort. ”

“ How Florence Nightingale succeeded in managing committees with whom she had to work, as well as the sense of humor which helped to carry her over difficult situations, are admirably shown in extracts from her private letters, written soon after she returned from Kaiserwerth. She had been importuned to undertake the management of an institution known as an “Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness,” which had been started, but had been so grossly mismanaged that it had been threatened with closure. ”

“ Nurses of today, in common with the rest of the world, owe a greater debt of gratitude than most of them realize to Lord Lister who, by his surgical experiments, and his demand for trained nurses, helped so much in laying the foundations for the trained nursing of today. Other workers in the realm of bacteriology were aiding greatly in the remarkable developments which medicine and surgery were making in that period. ”

“ It was her custom for some years to issue an annual address to the nurses of the Nightingale School, and for many years the authorities of the school insisted on every probationer studying the first of these addresses, issued in 1872, the year in which she began her closer supervision of the details of training. In these addresses she dwelt strongly on the ideals of nursing she had from the beginning—that it requires a strong sense of vocation or a special call; that it needs a religious basis; that it is an art; that there must be constant progress or stagnation ”

“ No one who studies Miss Nightingale’s life and ideals can be left in doubt, that, in her mind, in the choice of nurses, the first and greatest thing to be considered was the character of the applicant. ”

“ An English writer, Miss Margaret Fox, in an address to nurses has called attention to the great need of the spirit of vocation in the nurses of today. “Look at it what way you will,” she states, “the fact remains that nursing is work demanding something more than mere business qualities, more than an active intelligence, more than even sympathy and kindness of heart. ”

“ Yet all these are generally comprehended in the one sweeping assertion that the patient has ‘no appetite.’”
“If you cannot get the habit of observation one way or other, you had better give up the being a nurse, for it is not your calling, however kind and anxious you may be.”
“It appears that scarcely any improvement in the faculty of observing is being made. Vast has been the increase of knowledge in pathology—that science which teaches us the final change produced by disease on the human frame—scarce any in the art of observing the signs of the change while in progress. ”

“ She does not know how soon she may find herself placed in such a situation; she must be no gossip, no vain talker; she should never answer questions about her sick except to those who have a right to ask them; she must, I need not say, be strictly sober, and honest; but more than this, she [Pg 38] must be a religious and devoted woman; she must have a respect for her own calling because God’s precious gift of life is often literally placed in her hands; she must be a sound and close and quick observer; and she must be a woman of delicate and decent feeling. ”

“ He and she, each in the manner in which Nature or Providence fitted them, were simultaneously inaugurating the new era, he the foster father, she the foster mother of myriads of this generation and unthinkable millions of those who are to be. ”