Florence Nightingale

“ The one thing which in a Civil Hospital, an Assistant Nurse should be allowed to do for the Head Nurse, is the cleaning her fire-place, a thing done in a few minutes, and with satisfaction, by women who have done it all their lives; but a dirty tedious messing business to those who have not. But never mind: the orderly must never enter the Nurse’s room: she must do it, and learn to do it. The prosaic little business of black-lead, ashes, and mess lying on the threshold of the work will do good rather than harm. And even black-lead is unnecessary, as a varnish now obtainable looks better. ”

“ But why should the midwives be ignorant? and why (in the great movement that there is now to make women into medical men) should not this branch, midwifery, which they will find no one to contest against them—not at least in the estimation of the patients—be the first ambition of cultivated women? Is there any rational doubt that, suppose there were a man and a woman, both equally versed in midwifery art and science, the woman would be the one sent for by all lying-in women?
There is a better thing than making women into medical men, and that is making them into medical women. ”

“ A man is now a more handy and far less objectionable being in a sick-room than a woman. Compelled by her dress, every woman now either shuffles or waddles—only a man can cross the floor of a sick-room without shaking it! What is become of woman's light step?—the firm, light, quick step we have been asking for?
Unnecessary noise, then, is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well. For, in all these remarks, the sick are only mentioned as suffering in a greater proportion than the well from precisely the same causes. ”

“ If we can do the work we don’t like from the higher motive till we do like it, that is one test of being a real Nurse. A Nurse is not one who can only do what she does like, and can’t do what she does not like. For the Patients want according to their wants, and not according to the Nurse’s likes or dislikes.
If you wish to be trained to do all Nursing well, even what you do not like—trained to perfection in little things—that is Nursing for the sake of Nursing, for the sake of God and of your neighbour. ”

“ Enquiry and investigation are the curse of India, as of any country where we do not act up to the light we have: where evils are investigated and re-investigated fifty times over, simply as an excuse for doing nothing.
Everybody has known for half a century that, if the water of Bengal were regulated, the superabundance carried off during the monsoon, and plenty of water, fresh from the rivers, carried through every village in the dry season for irrigation, drinking, and carriage, the whole condition of the people would be immeasurably improved. ”

“ In December we sent to New South Wales, by desire of the government there, which defrayed and assumed all expenses, to take charge of the Sydney Infirmary and to found a future training school for the colony, five trained nurses and a trained lady-superintendent.
I give a quarter of a century's European experience when I say that the happiest people, the fondest of their occupation, the most thankful for their lives, are, in my opinion, those engaged in sick nursing. In my opinion, it is a mere abuse of words to represent the life, as is done by some, as a sacrifice and a martyrdom. ”

“ There were indeed other important reforms made by Lord Herbert during this his last short tenure of office. But not for these, or so much for these as for the rest, will he be remembered. He will be remembered chiefly as the first war minister who ever seriously set himself to the task of saving life—who ever took the trouble to master a difficult subject so wisely and so well, as to be able himself, and to show the way to others, to husband the resources of this country, in which human life is of more value than in any other—of more value than any thing else. ”

“ We all know how difficult it is to preserve health among dense populations in our houses at home. We may hence infer how much more difficult it is to draw together numbers of uncivilized or partially civilized people, within the same boundary, or under the same roof, without great risk to health and life. Bring a healthy family from the open country into a narrow crowded London alley, and the little ones will die, the elder ones will be sick for, perhaps, the first time of their lives, and the parents will fall into confirmed ill health, to say the least of it. ”

“ Join heart with heart and hand in hand, and pray for the perfect gift of love to be the spirit and the life of all your work.
Can there be any higher work than this? Can any woman wish for a more womanly work? Can any man think it unworthy of the best of women?
When the greatest men of science devote a large part of their lives to bring in simple language within the reach of all the results of their deepest study, the women of the highest cultivation and of the deepest sympathy may well take up such work as we have attempted here to sketch out. ”

“ The intense and exquisite humanity to the sick, underlying the glorious common sense about affairs, and the stern insight into the weaknesses and the perversions of the healthy, troubled as they are by the sight of suffering, and sympathizing with themselves instead of the patient, lay open a good deal of the secret of this wonderful woman's life and power. We begin to see how a woman, any thing but robust at any time, may have been able, as well as willing, to undertake whatever was most repulsive and most agonizing in the care of wounded soldiers and crowds of cholera patients. ”

“ Oh, could God but say that He can trust this Home and Hospital because He can trust every woman in it! Let us try this—every woman to work as though success depended on herself. Do you know that, in this great Indian Famine, every Englishman has worked as if success depended on himself? And in saving a population as large as that of England from death by starvation, do you not think that we have achieved the greatest victory we ever won in India? Suppose we work thus for this Home and Hospital. ”

“ At the present time there is an agency which brings cotton and cotton mills, separated by half the globe, into immediate relation; but there is no agency whereby labour and the demand or means of labour can be brought together.
This is simply done by chance at present, and both labourer and employer suffer.
Political economy does not say, let madmen run about the streets and pick up their living as they can. But it does say—and it takes for granted in spite of every day's cruel experience—that all human beings having any producing power have also the power of finding work, if they choose. ”

“ Nobody ever contemplated giving to a Nurse the entire charge of a number of sick in a Military General Hospital. It is no part of good Hospital nursing to do so. With proper Orderlies, a Nurse can very well attend to sixty or seventy sick. We were prevented, indeed, by the authorities, and by circumstances, from organizing a proper system of nursing, and were obliged to do all the good possible in the best possible way. But Sir John Hall’s method of estimating the efficiency of nursing, by dividing the number of sick by the number of Nurses, is simply absurd. ”

“ Do you ever go into the bed-rooms of any persons of any class, whether they contain one, two, or twenty people, whether they hold sick or well, at night, or before the windows are opened in the morning, and ever find the air anything but unwholesomely close and foul? And why should it be so? And of how much importance it is that it should not be so? During sleep, the human body, even when in health, is far more injured by the influence of foul air than when awake. Why can't you keep the air all night, then, as pure as the air without in the rooms you sleep in? ”

“ Yet the thought of a time when we shall have passed out of the sight and memory of men may also help us to live; may assist us in shaking off the load of tempers, jealousies, prejudices, bitternesses, interests which weigh us down; may teach us to rise out of this busy, bustling Hospital world, into the clearer light of God’s Kingdom, of which, indeed, this Home is or might be a part, and certainly and especially this Hospital.
This is the spirit of prayer, the spirit of conversation or communion with God, which leads us in all our Nursing silently to think of Him, and refer it to Him. ”

“ And all learnt, but a residuum of pure paupers. These will always require to be taught how to feed themselves.
When a government delivers up its own responsibility into the charge of its subordinates who are permanent, it pays a staff to prevent human progress.
The best work the world has seen has been paid work. But for any one of us to deliver up his or her charity, his or her personal responsibility as to every imbecile old woman, as to every dirty child, into the hands of a paid staff, into the hands of any staff indeed, paid or unpaid, is to salve over the sore which we ought to heal. ”

“ The most devoted friend or nurse cannot be always there. Nor is it desirable that she should. And she may give up her health, all her other duties, and yet, for want of a little management, be not one-half so efficient as another who is not one-half so devoted, but who has this art of multiplying herself—that is to say, the patient of the first will not really be so well cared for, as the patient of the second.
It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to manage, as it is to teach her how to nurse. ”

“ A Nurse is like a traveller, from the quantity of people who pass before her in the ever-changing wards. And she is like a traveller also in this, that, as Livingstone used to say, either the vices or the virtues of civilisation follow the footsteps of the traveller, and he cannot help it. So they do those of the Nurse. And missioning will be, whether she will or no, the background of her nursing, as it is the background of travelling. The traveller may call himself a missionary or not, as he likes. He is one, for good or for evil. ”

“ 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— (and wards are healthy or unhealthy, mainly according to the knowledge or ignorance of the nurse) —are not these matters of sufficient importance and difficulty to require learning by experience and careful inquiry, just as much as any other art? They do not come by inspiration to the lady disappointed in love, nor to the poor workhouse drudge hard up for a livelihood. ”

“ What is God’s command to Night Nurses? It is—is it not?—not to slur over any duty—not the very least of all our duties—as Night Nurse: to be able to give a full, accurate, and minute account of each Patient the next morning: to be strictly reserved in your manner with gentlemen (“Thou God seest me”: no one else) ; to be honest and true. You don’t know how well the Patients know you, how accurately they judge you. You can do them no good unless they see that you live what you say. ”

“ Wonderful is the face with which friends, lay and medical, will come in and worry the patient with recommendations to do something or other, having just as little knowledge as to its being feasible, or even safe for him, as if they were to recommend a man to take exercise, not knowing he had broken his leg. What would the friend say, if he were the medical attendant, and if the patient, because some other friend had come in, because somebody, anybody, nobody, had recommended something, anything, nothing, were to disregard his orders, and take that other body's recommendation? ”

“ Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing for ourselves in our Nursing life, present and future, but only this, “Thy will be done,” as we say in our daily prayer? Is it not to trust Him, that His will is really the best for each one of us? How much there is in those two words, His will—the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which always knows what is best for each one of us Nurses, which always wills what is best, which always can do what it wills for our best. ”