Excellent Women

by Various

CHAPTER V.

HOSPITAL WARDS.

It has been said that "every woman is by nature more or less a nurse," but like most sayings it is by no means always true. Many who possess the gentleness and sympathy which are so necessary in nursing the sick, yet lack the ready nerve, deftness, and promptitude. Who has not beheld the sad spectacle of women anxious to help, yet helpless because of their ignorance and want of training? That will be a happy day when a course of training in nursing, though it be but a short one, is considered a necessary part of every woman's education. Miss Nightingale truly says, "There is no such thing as amateur nursing … Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women's lives arises from their excepting themselves from the rule of training considered needful for man."

Agnes Jones was a "born nurse;" but although she had had many opportunities both at Fahan and at Kaiserswerth of developing her talent, she would not attempt to teach others what she had not thoroughly grasped herself. The post in Liverpool, of Superintendent of the Training School of Nurses for the Poor, was still open to her and, in spite of her fear that she lacked the capacity to govern, had many attractions for her, and so she said, "I determined at least to try, to come to St. Thomas's Hospital, and to see whether in so great a work as that of training true-hearted, God-fearing nurses, there were not some niche for me. If every one shrinks back because incompetent, who will ever do anything? 'Lord, here am I, send me.'"

Let no one think that the resolve cost her nothing. As a matter of fact it meant giving up a great deal, but to follow in the steps of Him who freely gave up all for us, she cheerfully surrendered her lovely Irish home for the dreary walls of a London hospital, where her companions were, as a rule, neither Christians in the true sense of the word, nor her equals in society. Yet who that knows the Lord Jesus as "a living bright reality" can talk of sacrifice? To know the need of the Lord's poor was sufficient for her, and she counted nothing too much to give up joyfully for Him and His. Nor was this choice, which she felt to be a life-choice, a thought but of yesterday. Not long after she went to Kaiserswerth she had, as she herself writes, "much watching of a poor dying man; sitting alone by him in that little room, day after day, it went to my heart to hear some of his requests refused, and to see the food given him, so unfitted to his state. And I sat there and thought, 'If these be the trials of the sick in an institution conducted on Christian principles, oh, how must it be in those institutions in our own land, where no true charity is in the hearts of most of the heads or hands that work them!' and I then and there dedicated myself to do what I could for Ireland, in its workhouses, infirmaries, and hospitals." She felt too, that although she could do good service for her Lord in ordinary Christian work, she could do still better if, possessing as she did a God-given talent for nursing, she could, like her Master, both speak a "word in season" and minister to the needs of the body.

So St. Thomas's was entered, entered with the hope and prayer that both amongst nurses and patients God would use her. And use her He did, as He does all who cry, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?" and then watch for the opportunity to do it. It was not long before she sought and gained permission to establish a Bible class for the other Nightingale nurses, which proved a great blessing to several of them. In her ward, too, she was often able to speak a word for Christ to the patients.

She was very happy in her busy life, writing, "I am so growingly happy in it, and so fond of nay work." Of its importance she became more and more convinced, and in a letter written from Barnet, where she was spending a few happy days with her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather, she says:—"My work, I more and more feel it, for the worst things only make me realise how Christian and really good nurses are needed."

But it was to Ireland that her thoughts ever turned, and it was of work in Ireland that she was thinking even while training in London For by this very training she hoped to be the better fitted for work in her own beloved country. "Ireland is ever my bourn," she wrote. And again:—"My heart is ever in Ireland, where I hope ultimately to work."

After a year at St. Thomas's, and a short visit home, she returned to London to take the superintendence of a small hospital in connection with the Deaconesses' Institution in Burton Crescent. Here she had all the nursing to do, as there were but few patients, and she had great joy in ministering to them. "I trust," she writes in a letter to her aunt, "I am gaining a quiet influence with my patients; they are my great pleasure." And again: "I am very happy here among my patients, and often feel God has sent me here; I have two revival patients; one had found peace before she came, the other is seeking it, and to both I can talk. Then I have a poor woman with cancer, who likes me to speak of Jesus, whom I believe she truly loves; so you see I am not without work."

A short time at this hospital, and a few months as superintendent at the Great Northern Hospital, ended her work in London. The work at the latter tried her much both in body and mind, for not only did the whole responsibility of it rest upon her shoulders, but owing to the inexperience of her assistants, most of the nursing devolved on her as well. One patient who was critically ill she was obliged for six weeks to nurse entirely both by night and day. Nervous debility was the natural consequence of such overwork, and a deafness from which she had suffered at Kaiserswerth so much increased that the doctor ordered her to rest. That was not immediately possible, as there was no one to take her place, and when at last a successor had been found, and she was able to return home, she was so weary both in body and mind that she failed to find her usual delight in the loveliness of Fahan. A few weeks' stay, however, in the bracing air near the Giant's Causeway restored her to her wonted health.

The winter was passed at her home, resting quietly in preparation for the work in Liverpool, of which the offer has been already mentioned. In the spring of 1865 she left for ever the old familiar spot with its beautiful hills and glens, and its cottages, to many of whose inmates she had been the means of bringing comfort and peace; Liverpool, with its needy poor and its many difficult problems, claiming her for the last three years of her life.