Volume I Part 38 (2/2)
[344] _St Jaazine_, April 1861 The writer was Mrs S C
Hall
[345] _Report of the Coale Fund for the year ending June 24, 1861_
IV
A little later, Miss Nightingale applied a portion of the Fund to another purpose, which she hadof ain, she worked through an existing institution, and by the agency of a woman already known to her
The Hospital selected for this experiale herself, before her call to the Crie Hospital was undertaken by nurses trained at the St John's House--an institution which had furnished a contingent to Miss Nightingale's Crimean expedition The nature of the experiale in a letter to Miss Harriet Martineau (Sept 24, 1861):--
They are to be persons selected by country parishes between 26 and 35 years of age, of good health and good character, to follow a course of _not less_ than 6 , and to confor's College Hospital No further obligation is imposed upon them by us
They are supposed to return to their parishes and continue their avocation there I aed to require a weekly sum for the board which will be merely the cost price--not less than 8s or more than 9s a week Our funds do not permit us, at least at first, to do this cost free For (the Hospital being very poor) we have had to furnish the Maternity Ward and are to -in beds In fact, we establish this branch of the Hospital which did not exist before The woht their business by the Physician-Accoucheurs theenerously entered, heart and soul, into the plan, at the bed-side of the Lying-in patients in this ward, the entrance to which is forbidden to the men-students And they will also deliver poor women at their own homes, out-patients of the Hospital The Head Nurse of the Ward, who is paid by us, will be an experienced midwife, so that the pupil-Nurses will never be left to their own devices They will be entirely under the Lady Superintendent--certainly the best ed in the Hospital, close to her If I had a young sister, I should gladly send her to this school--so sure aoodness; which I mention, because I know poor mothers are quite as particular as rich ones, not merely as to the hters
In nearly every country but our own there is a Government School for Midwives I trust that our School land Here we experi candidates I a and the principle that nothing second-best is good enough for the people are very characteristic
V
The experian in October 1861, had to be abandoned after six years' successful working owing to an epidemic of puerperal fever in the wards; but that at St Thohout Miss Nightingale's active years occupied a constant share of her thoughts and personal attention From 1872 onwards she wrote, as we shall hear later, a New Year's Address, whenever health and tiale Nurses, constantly inculcating high ideals, and giving personal inspiration to the order which bore her name Every year as it passed carried into wider circles her sche as hospital nurses the , and of raising by degrees the standard of education and character a nurses as a class From year to year the other hospitals were assisted from the mother school with trained superintendents and staff, and new centres were formed with the same objects,[346] and it ale through thethe calling of nurses to the position it now holds So said the Council of the Fund in their Report for the year in which Miss Nightingale died; and the facts collected in histories offully bear out their stateroups, as we shall hear in a later chapter, to initiate reform in other institutions In the British Colonies and the United States the ”Nightingale poorked in a siale School for their superintendents
”Miss Alice Fisher, who regenerated Blockley Hospital (Philadelphia), was a Nightingale nurse, and Miss Linda Richards, the pioneer nurse of the United States, enjoyed the advantage of post-graduate work in St
Thoale's personal kindly interest and encouragement”[347] Nor was the influence of her schelo-Saxon world In Germany, in France, in Austria, and in other countries, the training of nurses siale's lead Thus did the seed which Florence Nightingale transplanted frorow up in other soil and with different develophty tree with et wrote to Miss Nightingale begging her to send hi to consider the training of nurses”
[347] _History of Nursing_, vol ii p 184
In these days, when all our great hospitals have their training schools for nurses, when the tendency is towards increasing the requirements beyond the standard described in this chapter, and when nursing has becoanized profession, it requires so, was the work of the founder ofJust as a Colonel of the old school helped us to understand the difficulties of Miss Nightingale's experieon of the old school wrote a little book which is invaluable in helping us to realize the novelty of her experiment in St Thomas's Hospital This is the book by Mr South, to which I have already referred He was of the highest distinction in his profession; Hunterian orator and twice President of the College of Surgeons He was also Senior Surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital, a fact which perhaps explains Mrs Wardroper's anticipation of ”rather harsh criticisly, and even bitterly, opposed to the whole idea of the Nightingale Fund, and of any new provision for the training of nurses
He was ”not at all disposed to allow that the nursing establishments of our hospitals are inefficient, or that they are likely to be i” He believed that the nursing at St Thoood (as indeed in many respects it was), and he did not perceive that what the Nightingale Fund had in vieas to raise the general level, and to send out from St Thomas's trained nurses, who in their turn would train other nurses elsewhere Perhaps, if he had perceived this, he would have regarded it as superfluous His point of vieas that of the man who finds the world very well as it is I have cited the pleasure hich certain army doctors in the East found in the fact that few of their colleagues had subscribed to the Nightingale Fund Mr South found si the subscription list at ho scheme has not met with the approbation or support of the medical profession is,” he wrote, ”beyond doubt The very small number of medical men whose names appear in the enormous list of subscribers to the fund cannot have passed unnoticed Only three physicians and one surgeon from one (London) hospital, and one physician froale's nursing work had the support of so doctors, but I suppose we must take Mr South's word for it that the medical profession as a whole was unsyeneration received general approbation The doctors do not stand alone a the professions in a tendency to oppose reforal reform is almost proverbial; and as for the politicians, one-half of the dire results from reforms introduced by the other half
And so it continues until the paradoxes of one generation become the commonplaces of the next
But if the course of political and social progress is streith the wrecks of predictions of ruin, neither is it free from the disillusionments of reformers Fears ale, as the founder of reat and beneficent results, but she lived to experience soh that she wasthan of achievement We shall perhaps better understand her mind e pass, in the next chapter, to consider the religious sanction and the ideal of human perfectibility which she had worked out for herself in the world of thought, and which inspired her efforts in the world of action
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION: ”SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT”
(1860)
It fortifies h I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe'er I stray and range, Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change
I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall
A H CLOUGH
The life and work of Miss Nightingale, as described in the foregoing chapters of this Memoir, were such as were unlikely to have proceeded fro spiritual impulse It was a life devoted to work, and in that work she sought and found herself Yet fro” her as conspicuously free The body was so weak that the wonder is hooman in delicate health was able to perform so much of what Sidney Herbert called ”a man's work” in the world She was supported, sustained, inspired by great spiritual force and energy, which drove her to seek self-satisfaction in a dedicated life of work, and which in its turn found expression in a forion, independently attained and intensely held