During this time, her book, Notes on Nursing, was issued, in order to deepen the impression she was trying to make, that nursing skill was not something simply to be “picked up” by any woman, but that it required special gifts, special training—training by precept, as well as by example. The book furnished the precept teaching for that time, and was immensely popular. It is safe to say that no book on nursing which has appeared since, or which probably ever will appear, was received with the enthusiasm, that this book of hers aroused among all sorts of people, from the queen down to the laborer’s wife. It many ways, it was a remarkable book—remarkable in the underlying principles set forth, now, well understood and accepted, yet then a new story—and remarkable for its keen appreciation of the needs of the sick. Nurses of today, even graduates, might very profitably try to really learn and practice some of the lessons contained in that little book, written more than half a century ago. Her gospel of fresh air, and its application to health, was a new gospel at that time—yet after all these years it is still unheeded in many homes.
QUOTATIONS FROM HER “NOTES ON NURSING.”
“Do you ever go into the bedrooms of any persons of any class, whether they contain one, two or twenty people, whether they hold sick or well at night, or before the windows are opened in the morning and ever find the air anything but unwholesomely close and foul? And why should it be so? During sleep the human body even when in health, is far more injured by the influence of foul air than when awake. Why can’t you keep the air all night, then, as pure as the air without in the rooms you sleep in? But for this you must have sufficient outlet for the impure air you make yourselves, to go out; and sufficient inlet for the pure air from without to come in. You must have open chimneys, open windows or ventilators; no close curtains round your beds; no shutters or curtains to your windows; none of the contrivances by which you undermine your own health or destroy the chances of recovery of the sick.”
“Let no one ever depend upon fumigations, ‘disinfectants,’ and the like for purifying the air. The offensive thing, not its smell, must be removed. A celebrated medical lecturer began one day, ‘Fumigations, gentlemen, are of essential importance. They make such an abominable smell that they compel you to open the windows.’”
“True nursing ignores infection except to prevent it. Cleanliness and fresh air from open windows with unremitting attention to the patient, are the only defence a true nurse either needs or asks.”
“The very first canon of nursing, the first and the last thing upon which a nurse’s attention must be fixed, the first essential to a patient, without which all the rest you can do for him is as nothing, with which I had almost said you may leave all the rest alone, is this: To keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him.”