Florence Nightingale

“ A first beginning has been made to the district London nurse the real help and the real home which are the secret of the success of active religious sisterhoods abroad—together with he real independence, enterprise, indomitable pluck, self reliance, capability of training all the powers to the best efficiency, which are the secret of the success of the highest British character, and all of which are wanted in the crusade against dirt and fever nests—the crusade to let light and air and cleanliness into the worst rooms of the worst places of sick London. ”

“ Nay, as the old hospital nurse did thirty years ago, she may even come to prey upon what is provided for her patients.
There is a third alternative: that she breaks her heart.
But the thing which always does happen is, that no woman really fit for the work will do it, or ought to do it.
To have a person fit to live in a home—and who would have any other?—and to create homes for the poor, for it is nothing less, you must have a home fit for her to live in.
If you give nurses a bad home, or no home at all, you will have only nurses who will live in a bad home, or no home at all. ”

“ Thomas's Hospital is at present giving the year's hospital training to six, to be increased to twelve, admitted candidates.
A group of districts is now about to be nursed where the residents have engaged to raise £300 a year towards the expenses of a district home, with a skilled superintendent for supervising the nursing of four or more trained nurses, and one or two servants; for district nurses have quite other things to do than to cook for and wait upon themselves. They are the servants, and very hard-worked servants, of the poor sick. ”