OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3195, 15 April 1911, Page 4

OUR BABIES.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Everyone knows of Florence Nightingale as the noble, devoted heroine of the great Crimean War, and as the pioneer of modern nursing; but there are few in this country who realise the rare originality and penetration of her mind, and the marvellous insight that her writings show in regard to almost everything broadly affecting the health of mankind.

'lt was’no mere chance that led Sir Sydney Herbert to select a singularly modest, retiring Englishwoman for a great mission. He knew Miss Nightingale as a lady of independent means, who, in spite of the conventions of her time and social sphere, had been for many years devoting herself to the study and ijractical carrying out of everything then known in Europe as to the art of nursing. The fact that her father was an Anglican clergyman had not prevented her. placing herself under the Catholic organisation of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and in her researches she found her way among the Moslems of Turkey arid Egypt. All the world knows of the great barrack hospital at Scutari, with its thousands of sick soldiers, who lay huddled together festering in filthy beds or on the floors, in altogether unspeakable surroundings, suffering and dying more from foul air, bad food, and lack of the most ordinary decencies of life than from the wounds of battle. Everyone knows how Florence Nightingale and her band of Englishwomen faced the appalling situation, brought order out of chaos, prepared and served decent food, cleansed the Augean stable, let m light and sunshine by day and pure air always, and how the stricken soldiers reverently kissed the shadow of “the Lady with the Lamp,” as she passed through the watches of the night untiringly from bed to lied. All these things are well known, but there is little realisation of how much Florence Nightingale tried to do, apart altogether from hospitals and hospital nursing, in the rest of her long life for the women and people of England, or how’much good would have been effected, and how much suffering averted, if her enlightened views as to the training of all girls in the duties of home life and nursing had been accorded the attention" which they would receive to-day if propounded now for the first time—now when the world is beginning to recognise what she saw clearly before the middle of the Victorian era. It is amazing to find a woman advocating half a century ago views which most people suppose are of quite recent origin, and advocating them in a book, which refers to the foolishness of the then prevailing habit of wearing crinolines! I feel sure that the following extracts from “Notes on Nursing” will be of great interest to my readers:— .

“NOTES ON NURSING”

(By Florence Nightingale)

The following notes are by no means intended as a rule of thought by which nurses can teach themselves to nurse, still less as a manual to teach nurses to nurse. They are meant simply to give hints for thought to women who have personal charge of the health of other,s. Every woman—or, at least, almost every woman—in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whe--1 ther child or invalid—in other words, every woman is a nurse. Every day sanitary knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or, in other words, of how to put the constitution in such a state that it will have no disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place. It is recognised as the knowledge which every one ought to have, distinct from medical knowledge, which only a professional can have. ■ If, then, every woman must, at some time or other of her life, become a nurse —i.e., have charge of somebody’s' health, how immense and how valuable would be the produce of her united experience if every woman would think how to nurse! I do not pretend to teach her now: I ask her to teach herself, and for this purpose I venture to give her some hints. “MINDING BABY.” And now, girls, I have a word for you. You and I- have all had a great deal to do with “minding baby,” though “baby” was not our own baby. And we would all of us do a great deal for baby, which we would not do for ourselves. Now, all that I have said about nursing grown-up people applies a great deal more to nursing baby. For instance, baby will suffer from a close room when you don’t feel that it is close. If baby sleeps even for a few hours—much more if it is for nights and nights—in foul air, baby will, without any doubt whatever, be puny and sickly, and most likely have measles or scarlatina, and not get through it well. Baby will feel want of fresh air more than you. MANAGEMENT. Perhaps you will say to me, “I don’t know what you would have me to do. You puzzle me so. You tell me, don’t feed it too little; don’t keep the room shut up, and don’t let there be a draught; don’t let the child be dull, and don’t amuse it too much.” Dear little nurse, you must learn to manage. Some people never do learn management. I Slave felt all these difficulties myself, and I can tell you that it is not from reading ray book that you will learn to mind baby well, but from practising yourself how best to manage to do what other good nurses (and my book, if you like it) tell you. If you can keep baby’s air always fresh in doors and out of doors, and never chill baby, you are a good nurse. Now, can you remember the things you have to mind for baby? There is: WHAT BABY MUST HAVE.. - 1. Fresh air. 2. Proper warmth. 8. Cleanliness for its little body, its clothes, its bed, its room, and house. 4. Feeding with proper food at regular times. 5. Not startling it or shaking either its little body or its little nerves. 6. Light and cheerfulness. 7. Proper clothes in bed and up. , And management in all these things. —Helps Instead of Hindrances.— A really experienced and observing nurse neither physics herself nor others. And to cultivate in things pertaining to health, observation, and experience in women who are mothers, governesses, or nurses, is just the way to do away wttri amateur physicking, and, if the doctors did but know it, to make the nurse obedient to them—helps to them instead of hindrances. Such education in women would indeed diminish the doctor’s work; but no one really believes that doctors wish that there should be mqre illness, in order to have more work. NATURE—THE! GREAT HEALER. Nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It

is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing. Medicine is the surgery of functions, as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs. Neither can do anything but remove obstructions; neither can cure; Nature alone cures. Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to cure, but Nature heals the’wound.b So it is with-medicine. The function of an organ becomes obstructed. Medicine, so far as we know, assists Nature to remove the obstruction, but does nothing more. And what nursing has to do in cither case is to put the patient in the best condition for Nature to act upon him. Generally, just the contrary is done. You think fresh air and quiet and cleanliness extravagant, perhaps dangerous, luxuries, which should be given to the patient only when quite convenient, and medicine the panacea. If I have succeeded in any measure in dispelling this illusion, and in showing what true nursing is, and what it is not, my object will have been answered.

The everyday management of a sick room, let alone of a house—the knowing what are the laws of life and death for men, and what the laws of health for houses (and houses are healthy or unhealthy, mainly according to the knowledge or ignorance of the woman) —are not thes° matters of sufficient importance and difficulty to reouire learning bv experience and careful inouiry. just as much as any other art? They do not come by inspiration to the loving heart, nor to the poor drudge hard-up for a livelihood.

And terrihie is the injury which has followed to the sick from such wild notions.