Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
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![Of the suf- In watcliing diseases, both in private houses and in disej^e, dis- public hospitals, the thing which strikes the experienced ways the observer most forcibly is this, that the symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and inci- dent to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something quite different—of the want of fresh air, or of hght, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality and care in the admin- istration of diet, of each or of all of these. And this quite as much in private as in hospital nursing. The reparative process which Nature has instituted and which we call disease, has been hindered by some want of knowledge or attention, in one or in all of these things, and pain, suffering, or interruption of the whole process sets in. If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a pa- tient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing. What nurs- I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has dj ^^ * *^ been limited to signify little more than the administra- tion of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and adminis- tration of diet—all at the least ex]3ense of \dtal power to the patient. Nursin? the It has been said and written scores of times, that understood, every woman makes a good nurse. I believe, on the contrary, that the very elements of nursing are all but unknown. By this I do not mean that the nurse is always to blame. Bad sanitary, bad architectural, and bad admin- istrative arrangements often make it impossible to nurse.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2045255x_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
