“It is very important,” said Nurse Blacker to the compress class, “that the nurse should wash her hands before touching the patient’s wounds.”
“Now, tell me, Sister,” interposed a meek voice, “is that precaution for the nurse’s sake or for the patient’s? I mean, I suppose it’s in case the nurse should incur any infection from the wound?”
This point of view—that of the White Queen in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”—had not apparently struck Nurse Blacker before.
It all seems too ridiculous to be true, but yet the facts are here set down as they actually occurred.
We think there are a good many women about the world of the type of the spinster and her sisters, and we are also convinced that it would be quite impossible to succeed in impressing upon such minds even the most rudimentary notions of nursing; yet it is likely enough they may all have been granted certificates eventually. Professionals are dreadfully bored in dealing with amateurs, and are often glad to take the shortest road to deliverance.
We were once witness, in pre-war days, of the examination of a Red Cross class in the north of England. There was a weary doctor on the platform with a bag of bones; and a retired hospital nurse, very anxious to be on good terms with the delightful family who were the chief organizers of the movement, had charge of the “show.”
The doctor gave a brief address upon dislocation. It ran somewhat in this fashion.
“Dislocation is the misplacement of a joint. It is indicated by the symptoms of swelling, redness, pain, and inability to move the limb. There is no crepitation as in a fracture. As to treatment: my advice to you, ladies, when you meet a case of this kind, is—ahem—to leave it severely alone and to send for a medical man.”
The class took copious notes. The doctor dropped the two bones with which he had been demonstrating into the bag again, leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. His part of the transaction was concluded. It had been most illuminating, the ladies agreed, and the Signorina’s chauffeur, who has a yearning towards general self-improvement, remarked to her on the way home: