4. I do not think that much lasting public interest is likely to attend the Fund. The interest the public has, for the last few years, taken in hospitals has been fictitious and almost mischievous. The public can never really know what hospitals are, nor is it feasible or desirable that it should. What eventual good may be done in them must be done quietly and with great patience. What good may be done among the nurses must be done by infusing, if it may be, a higher and truer spirit of duty, by increased discipline and protection, and by ameliorating, in some material points, among which the aim contemplated by the Fund ranks very high, a condition which, to the end of time, must remain severe, rough, dangerous, and in all senses trying. In the details of all these things, most especially in all that concerns discipline, which involves protection, the public, with the best intentions, will only be an obstacle, and John Bull is sadly prone to pull up anything he plants or anything he waters, to see how it grows.
I think anything like appeals to or solicited support from the public might, in various ways, seriously embarrass the Superintendent of a very difficult and a very important though, at the same time, a very humble branch of Her Majesty’s Service. I should be very anxious to avoid this: it would be perpetuating the evils of publicity, and sacrificing the greater good for the lesser.
Necessity of Advice.
5. In conclusion I again submit that it would be desirable to ascertain from the hospital authorities above mentioned, and if possible from three or four able and honest men accustomed to business, their opinion as to the scope and details of this plan. In matters of spirit and of discipline we should probably rely on other judgment; but these are matters of business; and in which, without binding ourselves to follow, it seems most important to obtain and to weigh, the opinions of men long conversant with business.
January 23, 1858.
Note as to the Number of Women employed as Nurses in Great Britain.
To show the importance of an Institute for Nurses, it must be stated that 25,466 were returned, at the census of 1851, as nurses by profession, exclusive of 39,139 nurses in domestic service,[24] and 2,882 midwives. The numbers of different ages are shown in table A, and in table B their distribution over Great Britain.
To increase the efficiency of this class, and to make as many of them as possible the disciples of the true doctrines of health, would be a great national work.