How to nurse sick children : intended especially as a help to the nurses at the Hospital for Sick Children, but containing directions which may be found of service to all who have the charge of the young.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How to nurse sick children : intended especially as a help to the nurses at the Hospital for Sick Children, but containing directions which may be found of service to all who have the charge of the young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    9/80
    TO PARENTS The first edition of this little book was published for the benefit of the HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN, which was opened in the year 1851 in Great Ormond Street, Queen Square. It was the first hospital for children ever established in this country. The poor now flock to it, sick children from all parts of London are brought to it. The out-patients in the first year were 1252, in the second 4251 ; 'luring nine months only of the third year they already imount to between 5 and 6000; but still the want of funds limits the number who are received into it, and only thirty beds can be kept open for in-patients. Thirty beds! when more than 21,000 children die every year in this metropolis under ten years of age ; and when this mortality falls thrice is heavily on the poor as on the rich ! But alas, the tables of mortality do not tell the whole of the aad tale. It is not only because so many children die, that this 11 os] lital was founded ; but because so many are sick; because they languish in their homes; a burden to their parents who have no leisure to tend them, no means to minister to their wants. The one sick child weighs down the whole family; it keeps the father poor, the home wretched. The little one lives on in sadness, and dies in sorrow; broken only by a strange 1*