NURSING AS A CALLING.
[0 THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.."] SIR,—Yonr article on "Nursing as a Calling" in the Spectator of September 4th, together with the treatment of the same subject in Mrs. Earle's charming book, "Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden" (Spectator, p. 147), induce me, as one of the women who have never felt the slightest desire to take up nursing either "as a calling" or otherwise, to ask you to allow me a few lines of inquiry and comment. I should like to know why it is a " danger" that " a woman may take to nursing as she will open a shop or do typewriting." If a woman has not the necessary faculty she will fail in either career; but supposing she has not a sufficient income, why should she not attempt a profession which, besides affording her bread, and possibly providing for her old age, enables her to serve her country by saving life sometimes and curing pain often P You recognise that "sentimentalism" is not what is wanted in a nurse; is it not equally true that what is wanted is honest devotion to duty, and may not "duty" be fairly said to include keeping herself off the rates, whether of the parish or of her acquaintance P h the ideal of a nurse to be a " minis- tering angel" bent on self-sacrifice here and reward hereafter or is it to be a thoroughly trained member of a profession as necessary and as well worthy of payment as army, law, or medicine P
It may be worth while to remind the general public that not every woman who wears a nurse's uniform is a trained nurse, and that they should not judge of trained nurses by the young person we meet so often in fiction, and occasionally in real life, who has passed through a hospital somehow, but whom no responsible head of an institution would recommend. To carry out intelligently the modern antiseptic treatment, nurses must cultivate their minds ; they also require consider- able physical strength, for the strain on nerve and muscle is very great, even when the conditions of the life as to food, rest, and outing are such as to allow them the full use of their powers. Fortitude and patience seem to be wonderfully developed by the training, which makes it a matter of course that the nurse should do what the " case " requires without considering her own fatigue or danger. I do not agree with Mrs. Earle that this training is likely to " unsex a woman; " few women are fortunate enough to go through life without having to face ugly sights, to recognise that humanity may be degraded below the level of the brute, and that the " wages of sin " are often worse than death. The nurse, no doubt, gets inured to the sight of horrors, but she is pre. served from dwelling upon them by the absorption of all her faculties in trying to meet the claim they make upon her.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN OLD WOMAN WHO IS PROUD TO COUNT SEVERAL PRO. FESSIONAL NURSES AMONG HER FRIENDS.
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