Lights and Shadows in a Hospital. By Alice Terton. (Methuen
and Co. 3s. (ld.)—Mrs. Terton has had a considerable and varied experience of nursing. She began by being a " supplementary nurse." This, she explains, is a dignified name for charwoman. Then she went as a " paying probationer," and was promoted to be a " sister " with a ward of her own to look after. Finally, she was put in command of a cottage hospital. Her book is a sensible, kindly, unprejudiced record of experiences. It is refreshing to read it after the somewhat heated controversy which has been lately carried on in the periodical Press and the newspapers. There are hospitals and hospitals, nurses and nurses, patients and patients. But Mrs. Terton finds the general upshot of what she has seen to be encouraging. Managers are anxious to do the best they can, though they often make mistakes ; nurses are kind and helpful, though they are sometimes conceited and silly, and sometimes thoughtless. "I like a good operation," said one in Mrs. Terton's hearing. "There is trash for you," meaning that they were not interesting eases; and the poor patients were much ashamed of themselves, even the poor boy who a little while before had been boasting that "he had necrosis of the tibia and the doctors were very pleased with him." Yet this same woman would doubtless do her very best for even the "trash." As for patients, Mrs. Terton puts them in this order of " niceness " : children, men, women. The worst said of the last class is that one grumbling woman "upsets the whole show" ; a grumbling man is suppressed by his companions ; the children do not grumble. This is a very pleasant and instruc- tive book.
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