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

by Florence Nightingale

They will thus contribute materially to the comfort and well-being of the sick; the real difficulties which undoubtedly beset the introduction of women into ward service will be avoided; and, an important consideration, not lightly to be discarded, their exclusion from the ward service will materially diminish the opposition of adverse masters, some of whom are also unscrupulous masters.

The other: its Advantages.

3. On the other hand, I suppose, the experience of every woman, admitted to ward service in hospitals where women were not before, is that many lives are actually saved by such admission, which would otherwise, humanly speaking, be lost. In time of war some ciphers may be safely added to the many. Any other great emergency, I suppose, but do not speak from experience, would give the same result.

That the experience of many surgeons is identical, their conduct has proved; no other testimony, under present circumstances, can rationally be expected from them.

Both to be Weighed.

4. It is often right to begin with the smaller and less-opposed good, and to introduce gradually, and, as it pleases God, the remainder. It may be our duty to do this, as to this matter.

Practical Superiority of the Second.

5. Practically, it is of little avail to superintend, ever so carefully, the issue of extras to the sick, unless there is permission and opportunity to pour the nourishment, perhaps in continual drops, down the throat of reluctant agony, or delirium, or stupor. And it is of little avail to have this permission, unless there be also that of raising the decent covering under which cholera, erysipelas, or the oppression of long recumbency, or the discharging wound, or the recent operation lie, and seeing to matters within. It is a further question, whether the painful cleansing of painful wounds, and the important minor dressings, as poulticing, which things, generally speaking, never have been done, and never will be done by surgeons, are best left to nurses, orderlies, or the patients themselves.

Its real and great Difficulties.

6. At the same time, nothing is more pernicious than to under-rate the objections of opponents. There is no doubt that the admission of women to ward service is beset with difficulties. These Naval and Military Hospitals are, and must ever be, peculiar Hospitals, essentially different in important details from the Civil Hospitals.