Sick woman

“ 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. ”

“ She made no reply, but got up, and after uttering a thousand reproaches against me, walked out of the chamber: all the ladies followed her, leaving me in inconceivable affliction.
I continued thus ten days, without seeing any body but an old female slave that brought me victuals. I asked her what was become of the favourite lady. "She is sick," said the old woman; "she is sick of the poisoned smell with which you infected her. Why did you not take care to wash your hands after eating of that cursed dish?" ”

“ The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. ”

“ HILE the woman is sick no stranger must take anything out of the house, especially a coal of fire, or the woman will die or become a cripple, or meet with some other great affliction. Beggars and others coming to the house for anything are at once sent away: they would not have come to the place if they knew that a woman was sick. ”

“ Of this abandonment of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk and friends and of the scarcity of servants arose an usage before well nigh unheard, to wit, that no woman, how fair or lovesome or well-born soever she might be, once fallen sick, recked aught of having a man to tend her, whatever he might be, or young or old, and without any shame discovered to him every part of her body, no otherwise than she would have done to a woman, so but the necessity of her sickness required it ”

“ There are more women than men as usual, and although the women want to marry, all the men do not. There remains only sickness and death for a stand-by, so to speak. If one of them is really sick and dies, the people are aroused to take notice. The sick person and the corpse have a certain state and dignity which they have never attained before. Why, bless you, man, [pg 064] I have one patient, a middle-aged woman, who has been laid up for years with rheumatism, and she is fairly vainglorious, and so is her mother. ”

“ Mothers ought to give their daughters the experience of sitting with the sick; of preparing food for them; of binding up wounds. It is a pitiful sight to see a helpless woman in the sick room, ignorant through lack of experience and education, of ways to be useful at the time and place where these characteristics of woman adorn her the most of all others.
After we returned from Texas, being the oldest child and the servants all gone, my mother sick, and the younger children going to school, I had the house work, cooking and most of the washing to do. ”

“ The woman who believes it takes no strength to bear a little noise or some disagreeable announcements, and loses patience with the weak, nervous invalid who is agonized with creaking doors or shoes, or loud, shrill voices, or rustling papers, or sharp, fidgety motions, or the whispering so common in sick-rooms and often so acutely distressing to the sufferer, will soon correct such misapprehensions by herself experiencing a nervous fever. ”

“ It is no laughing matter. If an American woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven help her!—Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature to devote myself to sick-nursing where there is no real sickness. ”

“ The moral world of the sick-bed explains in a measure some of the things that are strange in daily life, and the man who does not know sick women does not know women.
I have been often asked by ill women if my contact with the nervous weaknesses, the petty moral deformities of nervous feminine natures, had not lessened my esteem for woman. ”

“ There is no point where a woman is more liable to suffer from a want of knowledge and experience than in reference to the health of a family committed to her care. Many a young lady who never had any charge of the sick; who never took any care of an infant; who never obtained information on these subjects from books, or from the experience of others; in short, with little or no preparation, has found herself the principal attendant in dangerous sickness, the chief nurse of a feeble infant, and the responsible guardian of the health of a whole family. ”

“ But that it is not, many a teacher of young ladies' boarding schools, female seminaries, &c.—to say nothing of parents—might abundantly testify.
That they are very often the dupes of the quacks and quackery with which our age abounds—or at least, that they take many of the pills, and cough drops, and bitters, and panaceas of the day—I will not believe. Much as they err to their own destruction, I trust they have not yet sunk so low as this.
CHAPTER XXIX. TAKING CARE OF THE SICK. The art of taking care of the sick should be a part of female education. ”

“ So the world is full of young women who grow pale and feeble, sick and suffering. The ones are a prey to inflammations more or less severe; the others remain under the dominion of nervous attacks more or less violent. ”

“ How can a doctor judge a woman’s sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.” ”

“ Take my baby into a sick room? Not if I know it. I s'pose you just come out o' there? Well, don't you stay here, bringin' diseases. A hospital's the true place fer the sick,' she says.
"I went back to Mis' Loneway, an' I guess I lied some. I said the kid was sick—had the croup, I thought, an' she'd hev to wait. Her face fell, but she said 'all right an' please not to say nothin',' an' then I went out an' done my best to borrow a kid for her. I ask' all over the neighbourhood, an' not a woman but looked on me for a cradle snatcher—thought I wanted to abduct her child away from her. ”

“ It is obvious that in such a case as this the physician is largely diagnostician and director, the actual treatment consisting in getting a selfish and inert social system to help out one of its victims. That a sick man should be left to sink or swim, though he has previously been industrious and a good member of society, is injustice and social inefficiency. That a woman, under such circumstances, should be left with the entire burden on her hands is part of the stupidity and cruelty of society. ”

“ And great disorders have been and are caused with such sick when they leave the said hospital with little health and strength—some returning to their own houses, and some to those of others, where because of the little or no comfort, and the poor and injurious food, with wine, tobacco, buyo, and other similar things, and the continual temptations to associate with women of evil life, they relapse, so that their sickness has no cure. ”

“ The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. ”

“ The question, however, arises—which evil is the greater,—that five hundred youths, in full health and vigour, should be made a little uncomfortable by the presence of seven women, or that seven times five hundred women, unnerved by suffering, should be subjected to the very trial they shrink from.
“That women do truly shrink from this trial, the number of wretched, broken-down sufferers from chronic disease but too clearly proves. It is only when racked by constant pain that a woman’s natural delicacy at last gives way, often only to hear said the words (how bitter they are!) ”

“ Often as she sat at her father’s table with all the good things to eat and the beautiful silver, glass, and china before her, she would think of the poor and sick who were without even an orange to quench the thirst of fever. Frequently she drove with her father’s physician into the country, taking baskets filled with dainties, often denying herself something that she might share with others. Everybody loved to have her enter the sickroom, for her unselfish and helpful nature made her a tender nurse. ”

“ She is a fine lady through it all; she thinks she is not, but she is. Do you suppose she will wash up the cups and plates and spoons as they ought to be washed and kept in a sick person's room? and do you fancy she will clean out the grate, and go down on her knees to wash the floor? Your fine lady nurse won't. There is a case of infection, for instance,—measles or scarlet fever,—and the nurse comes down from London, and she is supposed to take possession; but one of the servants of the house has to go in to clean and dust and arrange, or the sickroom is not dusted or cleaned at all. ”

“ No story was too bad for the women to tell over their tea-cups, or in their boudoirs, but if any little ordinary physical misery were alluded to, except in the most flippant way, such as the rash on a child's stomach, or the preceding discomforts of maternity, there was a pained and disgusted silence, and an open snub, if possible, for the woman so crude as to introduce the distasteful topic. ”

“ How distressing to see a woman struggling with her daily round of household duties, when her back and head are aching, and every movement brings out a new pain.
One day the poor woman is wretched and utterly miserable; in a day or two she is better, and laughs at her fears, thinking there is nothing much the matter after all; but before night the deadly backache reappears, the limbs tremble, the lips twitch—it seems as though all the imps of Satan were clutching her vitals ”

“ At a time when the subject of the employment of women is pressing upon us on all sides, we ask with astonishment why comparatively few are found to undertake this most urgent and pressing duty of caring for the sick? ”

“ And the intimate connection of these organs with the brain and whole nervous system renders injuries thus inflicted the causes of the most extreme anguish, both of body and mind. This evil is becoming so common, not only among married women but among young girls, as to be a just cause for universal alarm.
How very common these sufferings are few but the medical profession can realize, because they are troubles that must be concealed. Many a woman is moving about in uncomplaining agony who, with any other trouble involving equal suffering, would be on her bed surrounded by sympathizing friends. ”

“ Now, one of the discoveries about my wife which I but half understood and made light of, had been that she was mad, literally mad, on the subject of social climbing. That means she was possessed of the disease imported into this country from England, where it has raged for upward of half a century—the disease of being bent upon associating by hook or by crook with people whose strongest desire seems to be not to associate with you. This plague does not spare the male population—by no means. But it rages in and ravages the female population almost to a woman. ”

“ Hence her hours of sickness go by in ugliness and idle fretting; while the true woman finds graceful work to do that enlivens their monotony, and in the continuance of her home duties loses the galling sense of loss from which the other suffers.
213 In sickness too, who but women can nurse? Men make good nurses enough out in the bush, where nothing better can be had ”

“ For three weeks I laid in a bed of fever, during which time the only feminine voices that reached my ears were those of the trained nurse and my maid. Each day dainty ices and fresh flowers were sent to me, all by the hand of the man whose acquaintance was a black mark on the white character of any woman.
“During all those days of tossing in burning delirium, no women in the neighborhood crossed the threshold of my home. ”

“ Consequently, what with the anguish of knowing that her profession is neglected, and what with the unenlivened tedium of her days, sickness will be a formidable thing to women of the androgynous type—and to the men belonging to them.
211 Again, care and tact are required to rob sickness of its more painful features, and to render it not too distressing to the home companions. A real woman, with her instincts properly developed—among them the instinct of admiration—knows how to render even invalidism beautiful ”

“ And yet, painful as the condition of the working woman is, it is relatively fortunate. Should work fail her for one day, two days, what then? Should sickness come—sickness almost always occasioned by unwholesome food, want of fresh air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from dwelling on such gloomy pictures. ”

“ The physical effects of such a life as this are as bad as the mental, and both are as bad as the worst can make them. A feverish, overstrained condition of health either prevents the fashionable woman from being a mother at all, or makes her the mother of nervous, sickly children. ”

“ The women are usually cleanly in their persons; but, however congenial cleanliness may be to their sex, they, like the sick and bearded men, seem to be greatly afraid of ablution in hectic fever, and some thoracic diseases with which they are often visited. ”