Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

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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    e]ce ? Do we really place the love of our kind (and of nursing, as <5ne branch of it.) so low as this ? What would the Mere Angeiique of Port E-oyal, what would our own Mrs. Fry have said to this ? Note.—I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons); of the jargon, namely, about the rights of women, which urges women to do all that m^en do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be recalled to a sense of their duty as women, and because this is women's work, and that is men's, and these are things which women should not do, which is all asserti-on and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, both of them, the one jiuit as much as tbe other, but listening to the what people will say, to opinion, to the voices from without? And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without. You do not want the effect of your good things to be, How wonderful for a woman!'' nor would you be deterred from good things, by hearing it said, Yes, but she ought not to have done this, because it is not suitable for a woman. But you want to do the thing that is good, whether it is suitable for a woman or not. It does not make a thing good, that it is remarkable that a woman should have been able to do it. Neither does it make a thing bad, which would have been good had a man done it, that it has been done by a woman. Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's vrork, in simplicity and singleness of heart.