Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War

by Florence Nightingale

The exercise question should, in Military Hospitals, be left entirely to the Surgeons; they may fairly consider it enters into the question of treatment, which is different from the Continental treatment. The enforcement of different hours of exercise from those of the other patients is good, as is every brand which can, quietly and effectually, affix disgrace to these wards.

Deprivation of visitors, if it could be done, would be very salutary. In the great London Civil Hospitals, men and women visit the male venereal wards; women alone the female wards (and melancholy things are the visiting hours there; here and there a heart-broken mother, abundance of prostitutes, and no lack of procuresses. A firm and vigilant Head Nurse will sometimes refuse admitting one of the two latter sorts to some patient, whom she knows they are endeavouring to make sure of again; but as the rules admit female visitors, and she is by rights only entitled to eject a visitor whose behaviour is disorderly in the ward, the Head Nurse can only do this in point of fact by straining the rules, and cannot do it often). The female visitors of the male venereal wards are usually, on the average, much less disreputable than those to the equivalent female wards; and are generally wives, mothers, and sisters, seldom prostitutes. There can be no doubt, however, that it would be much better if the patients of neither male nor female foul wards were allowed visitors, unless in the comparatively very rare cases of extreme danger; it would, in that case, be necessary that the Hospital should supply them with linen, and either supply them with groceries or forbid their receiving them from without.

In various essential respects the patients of a Military Hospital are different from those of a Civil Hospital. Were it possible to prevent all female visitors to the wards, except in dangerous cases, this would be best. If the existing rules or practice do not compel the sentries to refuse entrance to all disorderly women, however orderly their behaviour, such a rule, at any rate, should be enforced. And if all visitors, male and female, including, of course, soldiers, could be refused admittance to the venereal wards, always excepting cases of great danger, it would be very desirable. At all events, it would be very desirable to have all female visitors, without exception, excluded from these wards. These things are, I do consider, very important. But I would not press them, if refused.

Let the female service obtain, please God (I do not write these words pro formâ,—if possible, I feel every day more intensely how solely it is to Him we must trust in this difficult work,—the more so that, if possible, I feel every day more intensely the importance of, if He grants it success, improving secular Hospital nursing, leaving the English Sisterhoods, which will always have great advantages, and, I believe, great disadvantages, with reference to Hospital nursing, to take their share in this great field, which has plenty of room for both), let, I say, the female service obtain a firm footing in the Army Hospitals, and with it, and by cautious degrees, sundry ameliorations will creep in insensibly as to decorum among other things. Those solemn beautiful words I have always felt so full of meaning to us, “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”

Query as to Numbering Patients.

2. Military as well as Medical advice should also be taken upon the following point:

In most, not all, the great London Hospitals the patients, whose names are on their bed-tickets, are called by the numbers 1, 2, 3, &c., suspended over each bed; sometimes a patient’s name is never heard in the ward.

Now, very possibly, this would not at all do in a Military Hospital, and, if so, there is not another word to be said about it.

Otherwise, very few things so effectually save time, as the numbering plan. (In Civil Hospitals it is also excellent in other ways, of much less consequence in a Military Hospital, which will never, I conclude, be afflicted with “gentlemen,” Mr. So-and-So, and Master So-and-So, which latter inscription is frequently to be read on the letters of little boys in Hospitals, whose friends, on visiting days, also enquire for them by that title). But few things, I repeat, so effectually save time as numbering instead of naming the patients (names, of course, to be on bed-tickets). If, however, the officers consider it “unsoldierly,” give it up at once.

Regulations as to Swearing.