Oh, my dear Nurses, whether gentlewomen or not, don’t let people say of you that you are like “Girls of the Period”: let them say that you are like “field flowers,” and welcome.
(b) Cleanliness in person and in our rooms, thinking nothing too small to be attended to in this respect. And if these things are important in the “Home,” think how important they are in the Wards, where cleanliness and fresh air—there can be no pure air without cleanliness—not so much give life as are the very life of the Patients; where the smallest carelessness may turn the scale from life to death; where Disinfectants, as one of your own Surgeons has said, are but a “mystic rite.” Cleanliness is the only real Disinfectant. Remember that Typhoid Fever is distinctly a filth disease; that Consumption is distinctly the product of breathing foul air, especially at night; that in surgical cases, Erysipelas and Pyaemia are simply a poisoning of the blood—generally thro’ some want of cleanliness or other. And do not speak of these as little things, which determine the most momentous issues of life and death. I knew a Probationer who when washing a poor man’s ulcerated leg, actually wiped it on his sheet, and excused herself by saying she had always seen it done so in another place. The least carelessness in not washing your hands between one bad case and another, and many another carelessness which it is plain I cannot mention here—it would not be nice, though it is much less nice to do it—the least carelessness, I say, in these things which every Nurse can be careful or careless in, may cost a life: aye, may cost your own, or at least a finger. We have all seen poisoned fingers.
I read with more interest than if they were novels your case papers. Some are meagre, especially in the “history.” Some are good. Please remember that, besides your own instruction, you can give me some too, by making these most interesting cases as interesting as possible, by making them full and accurate, and entering the full history. If the history of every case were recorded, especially of Typhoid Fever, which is, as we said, a filth disease, it is impossible to over-estimate the body of valuable information which would thus be got together, and might go far, in the hands of Officers of Health and by recent laws, to prevent disease altogether. The District Nurses are most useful in this respect.
When we obey all God’s laws as to cleanliness, fresh air, pure water, good habits, good dwellings, good drains, food and drink, work and exercise, health is the result. When we disobey, sickness. 110,000 lives are needlessly sacrificed every year in this kingdom by our disobedience, and 220,000 people are needlessly sick all the year round. And why? Because we will not know, will not obey God’s simple Health laws.
No epidemic can resist thorough cleanliness and fresh air.
Is there any Nurse here who is a Pharisee? This seems a very cruel and unjust question.
We think of the Pharisees, when we read the terrible denunciation of them by our Master, as a small, peculiar, antiquated sect of 2000 years ago. Are they not rather the least peculiar, the most widely-spread people of every time? I am sure I often ask myself, sadly enough, “Am I a Pharisee?” In this sense: Am I, or am I not, doing this with a single eye to God’s work, to serving Him and my neighbour, even tho’ my “neighbour” is as hostile to me as the Jew was to the Samaritan? Or am I doing it because I identify my selfish self with the work, and in so doing serve myself and not God? If so, then I am a Pharisee.
It is good to love our Training School and our body, and to wish to keep up its credit. We are bound to do so. That is helping God’s work in the world. We are bound to try to be the “salt of the world” in nursing; but if we are conceited, seeking ourselves in this, then we are not “salt” but Pharisees.
We should have zeal for God’s sake and His work’s sake: but some seem to have zeal for zeal’s sake only. Zeal does not make a Christian Nurse if it is zeal for our own credit and glory—tho’ Christ was the most zealous mediciner that ever was. (He says: “The zeal of God’s house hath eaten me up.”) Zeal by itself does not make a good Nurse: it makes a Pharisee. Christ is so strong upon this point of not being conceited, of not nursing to show what “fine fellows” we are as Nurses, that He actually says “it is conceited of us to let one of our hands know what the other does.” What will He say if He sees one of us doing all her work to let not only her other hand but other people know she does it? Yet all our best work which looks so well may be done from this motive.
And let me tell you a little secret. One of our Superintendents at a distance says that she finds she must not boast so much about St. Thomas’. Nor must you. People have heard too much about it. I dare say you remember the fine old Greek statesman who was banished because people were tired of hearing him called “The Just.” Don’t let people get tired of hearing you call St. Thomas’ “The Just” when you are away from us. We shall not at all complain of your proving it “The Just” by your training and conduct.