Ten years later Miss Nightingale again returned to the “charge” and prepared a paper on “Life or Death in India,” which was read at the meeting of the National Association for the promotion of Social Science at Norwich in 1873, and afterwards published as a pamphlet with an appendix on “Life or Death by Irrigation.”
In this paper Miss Nightingale pointed out the cheering fact that during the past ten years in which sanitary reforms had been progressing the death-rate of the army in India had been reduced from sixty-nine per thousand to eighteen per thousand—that is, eighteen men died where sixty-nine had died before. Still, she considered that this only sufficed to show the work that yet remained to be done, especially with regard to the drainage, water supply, and the irrigation of the country for commercial purposes, on account not only of the soldier, but to promote the health of the teeming millions of our fellow-subjects in India and their general prosperity.
Miss Nightingale disposes of the “caste” difficulty with an amusing incident. When the Government’s new water supply “was first introduced into Calcutta, the high-caste Hindoos still desired their water-carriers to bring them their sacred water from the river; but these functionaries, finding it much easier to take the water from the new taps, just rubbed in a little (vulgar not sacred) mud, and presented it as Ganges water.
“When at last the filthy fraud was discovered, public opinion, founded on experience, had already gone too far to return to dirty water. And the new water supply was, at public meetings, adjudged to be theologically as well as physically safe.”
Miss Nightingale urges that irrigation schemes should be set on foot by the Government as a preventive against the ever-recurring famines which afflict our fellow Indian subjects so severely. “Is not the Government of India,” she asks, “too much like a dispensary, which does all that man can do to cure when too late to do anything to prevent?”
While Miss Nightingale’s pen was pleading so eloquently and practically during this period for the good of the great Empire in the East, she was not unmindful of the people at home. Her writings and work in connection with the sick poor must form the subject of a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE NURSING OF THE SICK POOR
Origin of the Liverpool Home and Training School—Interest in the Sick Paupers—“Una and the Lion” a Tribute to Sister Agnes Jones—Letter to Miss Florence Lees—Plea for a Home for Nurses—On the Question of Paid Nurses—Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Nursing Institute—Rules for Probationers.
Nursing is an Art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas, or cold marble, compared with having to do with the living body—the temple of God’s spirit....It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost said, the finest of the Fine Arts.— Florence Nightingale.
There is no branch of sick nursing which appeals more strongly to Miss Nightingale than the care of the sick poor. It was as a visitor in the homes of her poorer neighbours at Lea Hurst and Embley that she began her philanthropic work, and though the outbreak of the Crimean War drew her into the public arena and concentrated her attention on the army, she had not ceased to feel the importance of attending to the needs of the sick poor, and repeatedly drew attention to the fact that England was behind other nations in providing for the sick poor at home, and in infirmaries.