She has some last words to say on nursing as a profession, and gives a humorous little thrust at “the commonly received idea among men, and even among women themselves, that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the want of an object, a general disgust, or incapacity for other things, to turn a woman into a good nurse.” “This reminds one of the parish where a stupid old man was set to be school-master because he was ‘past keeping the pigs.’”
Miss Nightingale sums up the matter with some condensed wisdom on the question as to whether women are fitted for the medical and other professions. She urges them to keep clear of “the jargon” which impels a woman on the one hand to do things simply to imitate men, and on the other to refrain from doing what she has the power to accomplish simply because it has hitherto been considered man’s work. “Surely woman,” she writes, “should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God’s world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, but listening to the ‘what people will say’ opinion, to the voices from without? No one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without. You want to do the thing that is good, whether people call it ‘suitable for a woman’ or not. Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God’s work, in simplicity and singleness of heart.”
A year after the publication of Notes on Nursing, Miss Nightingale issued (1861) a modified edition of the work, under the title of Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes, adding a chapter on “Minding Baby,” which is specially addressed to young girls in working families, who have a great deal to do with minding mother’s baby. It is delightfully written and reveals how conversant the author was with the homes of the poor. It would do more good than many tracts if distributed by the district visitor, and would be a useful addition to the textbooks of our elementary schools. With her usual quick insight the Queen of Nurses recognises the importance of the working-girl nurse. “One-half of all the nurses in service,” she writes, “are girls of from five to twenty years old. You see you are very important little people. Then there are all the girls who are nursing mother’s baby at home; and in all these cases it seems pretty nearly to come to this, that baby’s health for its whole life depends upon you, girls, more than upon anything else.” Simple rules such as a girl of six could understand are given for the feeding, washing, dressing, nursing, and even amusement of that important person, “baby.”
“The healthiest, happiest, liveliest, most beautiful baby I ever saw was the only child of a busy laundress,” writes Miss Nightingale; “she washed all day in a room with the door open upon a larger room, where she put the child. It sat or crawled upon the floor all day with no other play-fellow than a kitten, which it used to hug. Its mother kept it beautifully clean, and fed it with perfect regularity. The child was never frightened at anything. The room where it sat was the house-place; and it always gave notice to its mother when anybody came in, not by a cry, but by a crow. I lived for many months within hearing of that child, and never heard it cry day or night. I think there is a great deal too much of amusing children now; and not enough of letting them amuse themselves.”
The versatility of Miss Nightingale’s pen is shown by her next publication, The Sanitary State of the Army in India, which came out in 1863. The hand which could write with such tender womanly concern about baby could deal vigorous blows at the insanitary condition of the soldiers in India. She had been keenly interested in Lord Herbert’s scheme for uniting the Indian with the Home army, and followed it up by a thorough investigation of the causes affecting the health of the army in India. An elaborate series of written evidence procured from all the principal stations of India by the Royal Commission appointed for the purpose, was laid before Miss Nightingale in 1861, and at the request of the Commission she wrote a valuable paper of comments on the reports. Lord Stanley succeeded Lord Herbert as President of the Commission, and to him Miss Nightingale addressed her observations, which form a book of some hundred pages. She points out in her usual concise style the evils arising from the defective sanitation of the camps, the bad water, lack of drainage, and the imperfections of the hospitals, and deals with the preventable causes which lead to drunkenness and a low tone of morality amongst the Indian troops.
The state of the army in India continued to be a matter of great concern to Miss Nightingale, and at the request of the National Social Science Congress she prepared a paper on the subject, to which she gave the arresting title “How People may Live and not Die in India.” This was read at the Edinburgh meeting in 1863, and published in pamphlet form the following year. In a prefatory note Miss Nightingale refers with pleasure to the improvement in the condition of the soldiers which had taken place in many respects. The introduction of soldiers’ gardens, trades, and workshops enabled the men to realise that it was better to work than to sleep and to drink, even during hot weather.
She gives an interesting instance of how these reforms had worked. “One regiment marching into a station,” she writes, “where cholera had been raging for two years, were ‘chaffed’ by the regiments marching out, and told they would never come out of it alive.
“The men of the entering battalion answered, They would see; we won’t have cholera. And they made gardens with such good effect that they had the pleasure not only of eating their own vegetables, but of being paid for them too by the commissariat. And this in a soil which no regiment had been able to cultivate before. And not a man had cholera. These good soldiers fought against disease, too, by workshops and gymnasia, and at a few hill stations the men have covered the whole hill-sides with their gardens.”
She goes on to tell of the good results taking place from the introduction of gymnastics for the men and cricket and other outdoor sports. “In short,” she adds in a pithy sentence, “work and all kinds of exercise cause sickly men to flourish.” Soldiers’ libraries were being established by Government, better cook-houses built, and the soldiers taught to cook. And so far she is glad to record that the soldiers’ habits had improved. “But the main causes of diseases in India—want of drainage, want of water supply for stations and towns—remain as before,” she ironically remarks, “in all their primitive perfection.” The death-rate of troops serving in India was the alarming one of sixty-nine per thousand per annum. “It takes something more than climate to account for this,” she writes. “All that the climate requires is that men shall adapt their social habits and customs to it, as, indeed, they must do to the requirements of every other climate under heaven. There is not a shadow of proof that India was created to be the grave of the British race.”
Miss Nightingale then enumerates the simple rules for dress, diet, and exercise to be observed by soldiers serving in India. But though a man can regulate his personal habits, “he cannot,” she adds, “drain and sewer his own city, nor lay a water supply on to his own station, nor build his own barracks,” and she proceeds to urge that sanitary reform in India is still one of the most pressing questions for the Government. By wise measures the enormous death-rate of sixty-nine per thousand might be reduced to ten per thousand. “What a work, what a noble task for a Government—no ‘inglorious period of our dominion’ that,” she writes, “but a most glorious one!”