London,May 26, 1875.
My dear Friends,—This year my letter to you must needs be short, for I am not able to write much. But good words are always short. The best words that ever were spoken—Christ’s words—were the shortest. Would that ours were always the echo of His!
First, then:
What is our one thing needful? To have high principles at the bottom of all. Without this, without having laid our foundation, there is small use in building up our details. That is as if you were to try to nurse without eyes or hands. We know who said, If your foundation is laid in shifting sand, you may build your house, but it will tumble down. But if you build it on solid ground, this is what is called beingrooted and grounded in Christ.
In the great persecutions in France two hundredyears ago (not only of the Protestants, who came over here and settled in Spitalfields, but of all who held the higher and more spiritual religion) a noble woman, who has left her impress on the Christian Church, and who herself endured two hard imprisonments for conscience’ sake, would receive no Probationer into her Institution, which was, like ours, for works of Nursing and for the poor, till the Probationer had well considered whether she were really rooted and grounded in God himself, and not in the mere habit of obeying rule and doing her work; whether she could do without the supports of the example and fellowship of a large and friendly community, the sympathy and praise of fellow-workers—all good things in themselves, but which will not carry us through a life like Christ’s. And I doubt whether any woman whom God is forming for Himself is not at some time or other of her life tried and tested in this lonely path.
A French Princess, who did well consider, and who was received into the said Institution on these conditions, has left us in writing her experience. And well she showedwhereshe was “rooted and grounded” through ten after-years of prison and persecution.
We have not to endure these things. Our lot is cast in gentler times.
But I will tell you an old woman’s experience—that I can never remember a time, and that I do not know a work, which so requires to be rooted and grounded in God as ours.
You remember the question in the hymn, “Am I His, or am I not?” IfIam, this is what is called our “hidden life with Christ in God.” We all have a “hidden life” in ourselves, besides our outward working life. If our hidden life is filled with chatter and fancies, our outward working life will be the fruits of it.
“By theirfruitsye shall know them,” Christ says. Christ knows the good Nurse. It is not the good talker whom Christ knows as the good Nurse.
If our hidden lifeis“with Christ in God,” by its fruits, too, it will be known.
What is it to live “with Christ in God”? It is to live in Christ’s spirit: forgiving any injuries, real or fancied, from our fellow-workers, from those above us as well as from those below (alas! how small our injuries are that we should talk of forgiving!) thirsting after righteousness, righteousness,i.e.doing completely one’s duty towards allwith whom we have to do, towards God above as well as towards our fellow-nurses, our patients, our matron, home sister, and instructors; fain to be holy as God is holy, perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect in our hospital and training school; caring for nothing more than for God’s will in this His training; careful for our sick and fellow-Nurses more than for ourselves; active, like Christ, in our work; like Christ, meek and lowly in heart in our Wards and “Home”; peacemakers among our companions, which includes the never repeating anything which may do mischief; placing our spirits in the Father’s charge. (“I am the Almighty’s charge,” says the hymn.)Thisis to live a life with Christ in God.
You may have heard of Mr. Wilberforce. He it was who, after a long life of unremitting activity, varied only with disappointment, carried the Abolition of the Slave Trade, one of England’s greatest titles to the gratitude of nations. Slavery, as Livingstone said, is the open sore of the world. (Mr. Clarkson and my grandfather were two of his fellow-workers.) Some one asked how Mr. Wilberforce did this, and a man I knew answered, “Because his life was hid with Christ in God.”
Never was there a truer word spoken. And if we, when the time comes for us to be in charge of Wards, are enabled to “abolish” anything wrong in them, it can only be in the same way, by our life being hid with Christ in God. And no man or woman will do great things for God, or even small, whose “hidden life” is employed in self-complacency, or in thinking over petty slights, or of what other people are thinking of her.
We have three judges—our God, our neighbour, and ourselves. Our own judgment of ourselves is, perhaps, generally too favourable: our neighbour’s judgment of us too unfavourable, except in the case of close friends, who may sometimes spoil each other. Shall we always remember to seekGod’sjudgment of us, knowing this, that it will some day find us, whether we seek it or not?Heknows who isHisnurse, and who is not.
Thisis laying the “foundation”;thisis the “hidden life with Christ in God” for us Nurses. “Keeping up to the mark,” as St. Paul says; and nothing elsewillkeep us up to the mark in Nursing.
“Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to ourselves, or performed to God.”What a pity that so many actions should be wasted by us Nurses in our Wards and in our “Home,” when we might always be doing common things uncommonly well!
Small thingsareof consequence—small things are ofnoconsequence; we say this often to ourselves and to each other.
And both these sayings are true.
Every brick is of consequence, every dab of mortar, that it may be as good as possible in building up your house. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link: therefore every link is of consequence. And there can be no “small” thing in Nursing. How often we have seen a Nurse’s life wrecked, in its usefulness, by some apparently small fault! Perhaps this is to say that there can be no small things in the nursing service of God.
But in the service of ourselves, oh! how small the things are! Of no consequence indeed. How small they will appear to us all some day!
For what does it profit a Nurse if she gain the whole world to praise her, and lose her own soul in conceit? What does it profit if the judgment of the whole world is for us Nurses, and God’s is against us?
It is a real danger, in works like these, when all men praise us. We must then see if we are “rooted and grounded in Christ Himself,” to nurse asHewould have us nurse, asHewas in God, to doHisSaviour-work. Am I His, or am I not?
It is a real danger, too, if in works like these we do not uphold the credit of our School. That isnotbearing fruit. Can we hope, may we hope that, at least, some day, Christ may say even to our Training School, as He did once to His first followers, “Ye are the salt of the earth”? But oh! if we may hope this, let us never forget for one moment the terrible conclusion of that verse.
If we can, in the faintest sense, be called “the salt “of God’s nursing world, let us watch, watch, watch, that we may never lose our “savour.” One woman, as we well know, may be honoured by God to be “the salt” to purify a whole Ward. One woman may have lost her “savour,” and a Ward be left without its “salt,” and untold harm done.
We ought to be very much obliged to our kind Medical Instructor for the pains he has taken with us, and to show this by our careful attention. Without this there can be no improvement.
There is a time for all things—a time to betrained, and a time to use our training. And if we have thrown away the year we have here, we can hardly recover it. Besides, what a shame it is to come here, as Probationers, at considerable cost (to others, most of us), and then not to make our improvement the chief business of our lives, so that at the end of our year we go away not much better but rather worse than we came! What account can we give of such a waste of time and opportunities, of the best gifts of God, to ourselves and to Him? “For God requireth that which is past.” If, when I was young, there had been such opportunities of training for Hospital work as you have, how eagerly I should have made the most of them!
Therefore, “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might”: be earnest in work, be earnest also even in such things as taking exercise and proper holiday. I say this particularly to future Matrons and Sisters, for there should be something of seriousness in keeping our bodies[7]too up to the mark.
Life is short, as preachers often tell us: that is, each stage of it is apt to come to an end before the work which belongs to it is finished. Let us
Act that each to-morrowFind us farther than to-day.
Act that each to-morrowFind us farther than to-day.
Act that each to-morrowFind us farther than to-day.
Let us be in earnest in work: above all, because we believe this life to be the beginning of another, into which we carry with us what we have been and done here; because we are working together with God (remember the Parting Command!) and He is upholding us in our work (remember the Parting Promise!); because, when the hour of death approaches, we should wish to think (like Christ) that we have completed life, that we have finished the work which was given us to do, that we have not lost one of those, Patients or Nurses, who were entrusted to us.
What was the Parting Command? What was the Parting Promise?
We Nurses have just kept Ascension Day and Whit-Sunday. Shall we Nurses not remember the Parting Command on Ascension Day—to preach the Gospel to every creature? And the Parting Promise: “And lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
That Command and that Promise were given,not to the Apostles or Disciples only, but to each and every one of us Nurses: to each to herself in her own Ward or Home.
Without the Promise the Command could not be obeyed. Without we obey the Command the Promise will not be fulfilled.
Christ tells us what He means by the Command. He tells us, over and over again: it is by ourselves,by what we are in ourselves, that we are “to preach the Gospel.”Not what we say, but what we do, is the Preacher. Not saying “Lord, Lord,”—for how many ungodly things are done and said in the name of God—but “keeping his commandments,” this it is which “preaches” Him; it is the bearing much “fruit,” not the saying many words. God’s Spirit leads us rather to be silent than to speak, to do good works rather than to say fine things or to write them.
Over and over again, and especially in His first and last discourses, He insists upon this. He takes the sweet little child and places it in our midst: it was as if He had said, “Ah! that is the best preacher of you all.” And those who have followed Him best have felt this most.
The most successful preacher the world has probably seen since St. Paul’s time said, some 300years ago, it was byshowing an example, not by delivering a discourse, that the Apostles’ work was really done, that the Gospel was really preached. And well did he show his own belief in this truth. For when all was ready for his mission to convert China to Christianity, and the plague broke out where he was, he stayed and nursed the plague.
We can, every one of us here present, though our teaching may not be much, by ourlives“preach a continual sermon, that all who see may understand.” (These words were found in the last letter, left unfinished, of a native convert of the “greatest missionary of modern times,” Bishop Patteson, who was martyred in the South Sea Islands, in September 1871, and this convert with him. Oh, how he puts us to shame!)
It has happened to me—I daresay it has happened to every one of us—to be told by a Child-Patient, one who had been taught to say its prayers, that it “was afraid” to kneel down and “say its prayers” before a whole ward-full of people. Do we encourage and take care of such a little child? Shall we, when we have Wards under our own charge, take care that the Ward is kept so that none at proper times shall be “afraid” to kneel down and say their prayers? Do wereflect on the immense responsibility of a Nurse towards her helpless Sick, who depend upon her almost entirely for quiet, and thought, and order? Do we think that, as was once said, we are to no one as “rude” as we are to God?
I believe that one of our St. Thomas’ Sisters, who is just leaving us after years of good work, is going to set up a “Home” for Sick Children, where, under her, they will be cared for inallways. I am sure that we shall all bid her “God speed.” And I know that many of those who have gone out from among us, and who are now Hospital Sisters or Nurses—they would not like me to mention their names—do care for their Patients, Children and all, inallways. Thank God for it!
When a Patient, especially a child, sees you acting in all things as if in the presence of God—and none are so quick to observe it—then the names he or she heard at the Chaplain’s or the Sister’s or the Night Nurse’s lips become names of real things and real Persons. Thereisa God, a Father; thereisa Christ, a Comforter; thereisa Spirit of Goodness, of Holiness; thereisanother world, to such an one.
When a Patient, especially a Child, sees usacting as if there werenoGod, then there but too often becomes no God to him. Then words become to such a child mere words. And remember, that when such a Nurse—“salt” which has lost its “savour”—speaks to her Patients of God, she putsa hindrancein their way to keep themfromGod, instead of helping themtoGod. She had better not speak to them at all.
It is a terrible thought—I speak for myself—that we maypreventpeople from believing in God, instead of bringing them to “believe in God the Father Almighty.”
What is it, “setting an example”? An example—of what?Whoisourexample, that we are to set? Christ is our example, our pattern: this we all know and say. And when this was once said—a very common word—before a very uncommon man, he said: “When you have your picture taken, the painter does not try to make it rather like, or not very unlike. It is not a good picture if it is notexactlylike.” Do we try to beexactlylike Christ? If we do not, “are we His, or are we not?” Could it be said of each one of us: “That Nurseis(or is trying to be) exactly what Christ would have been in her place”?
Yet this is what every Nurse has to aim at.Aim lower: and you cannot say then, “Christ is my example.” Aim as high: and, after this life, “we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.”
But this aim cannot be carried out, it cannot even be entertained, without the Parting Promise. The Parting Promise was fulfilled to the disciples ten days afterwards, on Whit-Sunday, when the Holy Spirit was given them—that is, when Christ came as He promised, and was with them.
Christ comes to each Nurse of us all: and stands at our little room-door and knocks. Do we let Him in?
The Holy Spirit comes, no more with outward show but with no less inward power, to each Ward and to each Nurse of us all, who is trying to do her Nursing and her Ward workin God, to live her hidden Nurse’s life with Christ in God.
When your Patient asks you for a drink, you do not give him a stone. And shall not our Heavenly Father much more give His Spirit to each one of us, His nurses, when she asks Him? (AreweHisnurses?)
What is meant by the Spirit descending uponusNurses, as it did on the first Whitsuntide? Is it not to put us in a state to nurse Him, by makingour heart and our will His? (He has really told us that nursing our Patients is nursing Him.) God asks theheart: that is, that we should consecrateallour self to Him—within as well as without,withineven more than without—in doing the Nursing work He has given each one of us here to do.
Is it not to have the spirit of love, of courtesy, of justice, of right, of gentleness, of meekness, in our Training School; the spirit of truth, of integrity, of energy and activity, of purity, which Heis, in our Hospital? This it is to worship God in spirit and in truth. And we need not wait to go into a church, or even to kneel down at prayer, forthisworship.
Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing for ourselves in our Nursing life, present and future, but only this, “Thy will be done,” as we say in our daily prayer? Is it not to trust Him, thatHis willis really the best for each one of us? How much there is in those two words,His will—the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which alwaysknowswhat is best for each one of us Nurses, which alwayswillswhat is best, which alwayscando what it wills for our best.
Is it not to feel that the care and thought ofourselves is lost in the thought of God and the care of our Patients and fellow-Nurses and Ward-Maids? Is it not to feel that we are never so happy as when we are workingwith Himandfor them? And we Nurses can always do this, if we will.
Is not this what Christ meant when He said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you”? “The kingdom of heaven” consists not in much speaking but in doing, not in a sermon but in a heart. “The kingdom of heaven” canalwaysbe in a Nurse’s blessed work, and even in her worries. Is not this what the Apostle meant when he told us to “rejoice in the Lord”? That is, to rejoice, whether Matrons, or Sisters, or Nurses, or Night Nurses, in the service of God (which, with us, means good Nursing of the Sick, good fellowship and high example as relates to our fellow-workers); to rejoice in the right, whoever does it; to rejoice in the truth, whoever has it; to rejoice in every good word and work, whoever it is; to rejoice, in one word, in what God rejoices in.
Let us thank God that some special aids to our spiritual life have been given us lately, for which I know many of usarethankful; and some of us have been able to keep this Whitsuntide as we never did before.
One little word more about our Training School. Training “consists in teaching people to bear responsibilities, and laying the responsibilities on them as they are able to bear them,” as Bishop Patteson said of Education. The year which we spend here is generally the most important, as it may be the happiest, of our lives.
Here we find many different characters. Here we meet on a common stage, before we part company again to our several posts. If there are any rich among us, they are not esteemed for their riches. And the poor woman, the friendless, the lonely woman, receives a generous welcome. Every one who has any activity or sense of duty may qualify herself for a future useful life. Every one may receive situations without any reference, except to individual capacity, and to a kind of capacity which it is within the power of the most humble and unfriended to work out. Every one who has any natural kindness or courtesy in her, and who is not too much wrapped up in herself, may make pleasant friends.
Although we know how many and serious faults we have, ought we not also to be able to find here some virtues which do not equally flourish in the larger world?—such as disinterested devotion tothe calling we have chosen, and to which we can here fully give ourselves up without anxiety; warm-hearted interest in each other, for no one of us stands here in any other’s way; freedom from jealousy and meanness; a generous self-denial in nursing our charges, and a generous sympathy with other Nurses; above all, an interest in our work, and an earnestness in taking the means given us to improve ourselves in what is to be so useful to others.
And this is also the surest sign of our improvement in it. This is what St. Paul calls: “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”
Always, however, we must be above our work and our worries, keeping our souls free in that “hidden life” of which it has been spoken.
Above all, let us pray that God will send real workers into this immense “field” of Nursing, made more immense this year by the opening out of LondonDistrictNursing at the bedside of the sick poor at home. A woman who takes a sentimental view of Nursing (which she calls “ministering,” as if she were an angel), is of course worse than useless. A woman possessed with the ideathat she is making a sacrifice will never do; and a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work “beneath a Nurse” will simply be in the way. But if the right woman is moved by God to come to us, what a welcome we will give her, and how happy she will soon be in a work, the many blessings of which none can know as we know them, though we know the worries too! (Good Bishop Patteson used to talk to his assistants something in this way; would we were like him!)
Nurses’ work means downright work, in a cheery, happy, hopeful, friendly spirit. An earnest, bright, cheerful woman, without that notion of “making sacrifices,” etc., perpetually occurring to her mind, is the real Nurse. Soldiers are sent anywhere, and leave home and country for years;theythink nothing of it, because they go “on duty.” Shallwehave less self-denial than they, and think less of “duty” than these men? A woman with a healthy, active tone of mind, plenty of work in her, and some enthusiasm, who makes the best of everything, and, above all, does not think herself better than other people because she is a “Nightingale Nurse,” that is the woman we want.
(Must I tell you again, what I have had to tell you before, that we have a great name in the world for—conceit?)
I suppose, of course, that sound religious principle is at the bottom of her.
Now, if there be any young persons really in earnest whom any of you could wish to see engaged in this work, if you know of any such, and feel justified in writing to them, you will be aiding materially in this work if you will put it in their power to propose themselves as Candidates.
My every-day thought is—“How will God provide for the introduction of real Christianity among all of us Nurses, and among our Patients?” My every-day prayer (and I know that the prayer of many of you is the same) is that He will give us the means and show us how to use them, and give us the people. We ask you to pray for us, who have to arrange for you, as we pray for you, who have to nurse the Patients; and I know you do. The very vastness of the work raises one’s thoughts to God, as the only One by whom it can be done. That is the solid comfort—He knows. He loves us all, and our Patients infinitely more than we can. He is, we trust, sending us to them; He will bless honest endeavours to doHis work among them. Withoutthisbelief and support, it seems to me, when we look at the greatness of the work, and how far, far we fall short of it, instead of being conceited, we should not have courage to work at all.
And when we say the words in the Communion Service—“Therefore with angels and archangels,” do we think whether we are fit company for angels? It may not be fanciful to believe that “angels and archangels,” to whom all must seem so different, may see God’s light breaking over the Nursing Service, though perhaps in our time it may not attain the perfect day. Only we must work on, and bring no hindrances to that light. And that not one of us may bring hindrances to that light, believe me, let us pray daily.
I have been longer than I intended or hoped, and will only say one more word.
May we each and all of us Nurses be faithful to the end, remembering this, that no one Nurse stands alone. May we not say, in the words of the prophet, that it is “The Lord” who “hath gathered” us Nurses “together out of the lands”? “It is because we do notpraiseas we proceed,” said a good and great man, “that our progress is soslow.” Should not all this Training School be so melted into one heart and mind, that we may withoneheart and mind act and nurse and sing together our praise and thanksgiving, blessing and gratitude, for mercies, every one of which seems to belong to the whole School? For every Nurse alike belongs to the Mother School of which she is a part, and to the Almighty Father, who has sent her here, and to whom alone we each and all of us Nurses owe everything we have and are.
F. N.
April 28, 1876.
My dear Friends,—Again another year has brought us together to rejoice at our successes, and, if to grieve over some disappointments, to try together to find out what it is that may have brought them about, and to correct it.
God seems to have given His favour to the manner in which you have been working.
Thanks to you, each and all of you, for the pains you have taken to carry out the work. I hope you feel how great have been the pains bestowed upon you.
You are not “grumblers” at all: you do try to justify the great care given you, the confidence placed in you, and, after you have left this Home, the freedom of action you enjoy—by thatintelligentobedience to rules and orders, to render which is alone worthy of the name of “Trained Nurse,” of God’s soldier. We shall be poor soldiers indeed,if we don’ttrainourselves for the battle. But if discipline is ever looked upon as interference, then freedom has become lawlessness, and we are no “Trained Nurses” at all.
The trained Englishwoman is the first Nurse in the world:if—IFshe knows how to unite this intelligent obedience to commands with thoughtful and godly command of herself.
“The greatest evils in life,” said one of the world’s highest statesmen, “have had their rise from something which was thought of too little importance to attend to.” How we Nurses can echo that!
“Immense, incalculable misery” is due to “the immoral thoughtlessness”—he calls thoughtlessness immoral—of women about little things. This is what our training is to counteract in us. Think nothing too small to be attended to in this way. Think everything too small of personal trouble or sensitiveness to be cared for in another way.
It is not knowledge only: it is practice we want. We onlyknowa thing if we candoit. There is a famous Italian proverb which says: “So much”—and no more—“each knows as she does.”
What we did last year we may look upon not as a matter of conceit, but of encouragement. We must not fail this year, and we’ll not fail. We’ll keep up to the mark: nay more, we will press on to a higher mark. For our “calling” is a high one (the “little things,” remember: a high excellence in little things). And we must answer to the call ever more and more strenuously and ever more and more humbly too.
We live together: let us live for each other’s comfort. We are all working together: grasp the idea of this as a larger work than our own little pet hobbies, which are very narrow, our own little personal wishes, feelings, piques, or tempers. This is not individual work. A real Nurse sinks self. Remember we are not so many small selves, but members of a community.
“Little children, love one another.” To love, that is, to help one another, to strive together, to act together, to work for the same end, to bring to perfection the sisterly feeling of fellow-workers, without which nothing great is done, nothing good lasts. Might not St. John have been thinking of us Nurses in our Training Schools when he said that?
May God be with us all and we beonein Him and in Hiswork!
God speed us all!Amen in our hearts.
God speed us all!Amen in our hearts.
God speed us all!Amen in our hearts.
These are some of the little things we need to attend to:
To be a Nurseisto be a Nurse: not to be a Nurse only when we are put to the work we like. If we can’t work when we are put to the work we don’t like—and Patients can’t always be fitted to Nurses—that is behaving like a spoilt child, like a naughty girl: not like a Nurse.
If we can do the work we don’t like from the higher motive till we do like it, that is one test of being a real Nurse. A Nurse is not one who can only do what she does like, and can’t do what she does not like. For the Patients want according to their wants, and not according to the Nurse’s likes or dislikes.
If you wish to be trained to doallNursing well, even what you do not like—trained to perfection in little things—that is Nursing for the sake of Nursing, for the sake of God and of yourneighbour. And remember, in little things as in great—No Cross, no Crown.
Nursing is said, most truly said, to be a high calling, an honourable calling.
But what does the honour lie in? In working hard during your training to learn and to do all things perfectly. The honour does not lie in putting on Nursing like your uniform, your dress; though dishonour often lies in being neat in your uniform within doors and dressy in your finery out of doors. Dishonour always lies in inconsistency.
Honour lies in loving perfection, consistency, and in working hard for it: in being ready to work patiently: ready to say not “How clever I am!” but “I am not yet worthy: but Nursing is worthy; and I will live to deserve and work to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.”
Here are two of the plain, practical, little things necessary to produce good Nurses, the want of attention to which produces some of the “greatest evils in life”: quietness, cleanliness, (a) Quietness in moving about the “Home”; in arranging your rooms, in notslammingevery door after you. No noisy talking on the stairs and in the lobbies—forgetting at times some unfortunate Night Nurse in bed. But if you are Nurses, Nurses ought tobe going about quietly whether Night Nurses are asleep or not. For a Sick Ward ought to be as quiet as a Sick Room; and a Sick Room, I need not say, ought to be the quietest place in God’s Kingdom. Quietness in dress, especially beingconsistentin this matter when off duty and going out. And oh! let the Lady Probationers realise how important their example is in these things, so little and so great! If you are Nurses, Nurses ought not to be dressy, whether in or out of their uniform.
Do you remember that Christ holds up the wild flowers as our example in dress? Why? He says: God “clothes” the field flowers. How does He clothe them?
First: their “clothes” are exactly suitable for the kind of place they are in and the kind of work they have to do. So should ours be.
Second: field flowers are never double: double flowers change their useful stamens for showy petals, and so have no seeds. These double flowers are like the useless appendages now worn on the dress, and very much in your way. Wild flowers have purpose in all their beauty. So ought dress to have; nothing purposeless about it.
Third: the colours of the wild flower are perfect in harmony, and not many of them.
Fourth: there is not a speck on the freshness with which flowers come out of the dirty earth. Even when our clothes are getting rather old we may imitate the flower: for we may make them look as fresh as a daisy.
Whatsoever we do, whether we eat or drinkor dress, let us do all to the glory of God. But above all remember, “Be not anxious what ye shall put on,” which is the real meaning of “Take no thought.”
This is not my own idea: it was in a Bible lesson, never to be forgotten. And I knew a Nurse who dressed so nicely and quietly after she had heard this Bible lesson that you would think of her as a model. And alas! I have known, oh how many! whose dress was their snare.
Oh, my dear Nurses, whether gentlewomen or not, don’t let people say of you that you are like “Girls of the Period”: let them say that you are like “field flowers,” and welcome.
(b) Cleanliness in person and in our rooms, thinking nothing too small to be attended to in this respect. And if these things are important in the “Home,” think how important they are inthe Wards, where cleanliness and fresh air—there can be no pure air without cleanliness—not so much give life asarethe very life of the Patients; where the smallest carelessness may turn the scale from life to death; where Disinfectants, as one of your own Surgeons has said, are but a “mystic rite.” Cleanliness is the only real Disinfectant. Remember that Typhoid Fever is distinctly a filth disease; that Consumption is distinctly the product of breathing foul air, especially at night; that in surgical cases, Erysipelas and Pyaemia are simply a poisoning of the blood—generally thro’ some want of cleanliness or other. And do not speak of these as little things, which determine the most momentous issues of life and death. I knew a Probationer who when washing a poor man’s ulcerated leg, actually wiped it on his sheet, and excused herself by saying she had always seen it done so in another place. The least carelessness in not washing your hands between one bad case and another, and many another carelessness which it is plain I cannot mention here—it would not be nice, though it is much less nice to do it—the least carelessness, I say, in these things which every Nurse can be careful or careless in, may cost a life: aye, may cost your own, orat least a finger. We have all seen poisoned fingers.
I read with more interest than if they were novels your case papers. Some are meagre, especially in the “history.” Some are good. Please remember that, besides your own instruction, you can give me some too, by making these most interesting cases as interesting as possible, by making them full and accurate, and entering the full history. If the history of every case were recorded, especially of Typhoid Fever, which is, as we said, a filth disease, it is impossible to over-estimate the body of valuable information which would thus be got together, and might go far, in the hands of Officers of Health and by recent laws, to prevent disease altogether. The District Nurses are most useful in this respect.
When we obey all God’s laws as to cleanliness, fresh air, pure water, good habits, good dwellings, good drains, food and drink, work and exercise, health is the result. When we disobey, sickness. 110,000 lives are needlessly sacrificed every year in this kingdom by our disobedience, and 220,000 people are needlessly sick all the year round. And why? Because we will not know, will not obey God’s simple Health laws.
No epidemic can resist thorough cleanliness and fresh air.
Is there any Nurse here who is a Pharisee? This seems a very cruel and unjust question.
We think of the Pharisees, when we read the terrible denunciation of them by our Master, as a small, peculiar, antiquated sect of 2000 years ago. Are they not rather the least peculiar, the most widely-spread people of every time? I am sure I often ask myself, sadly enough, “Am I a Pharisee?” In this sense: Am I, or am I not, doing this with a single eye to God’s work, to serving Him and my neighbour, even tho’ my “neighbour” is as hostile to me as the Jew was to the Samaritan? Or am I doing it because I identify my selfish self with the work, and in so doing serve myself and not God? If so, then I am a Pharisee.
It is good to love our Training School and our body, and to wish to keep up its credit. We are bound to do so. That is helping God’s work in the world. We are bound to try to be the “salt of the world” in nursing; but if we are conceited, seekingourselvesin this, then we are not “salt” but Pharisees.
We should have zeal for God’s sake and His work’s sake: but some seem to have zeal for zeal’s sake only. Zeal does not make a Christian Nurse if it is zeal for our own credit and glory—tho’ Christ was the most zealous mediciner that ever was. (He says: “The zeal of God’s house hath eaten me up.”) Zeal by itself does not make a good Nurse: it makes a Pharisee. Christ is so strong upon this point of not being conceited, of not nursing to show what “fine fellows” we are as Nurses, that He actually says “it is conceited of us to let one of our hands know what the other does.” What will He say if He sees one of us doing all her work to let not only her other hand but other people know she does it? Yet all our best work which looks so wellmaybe done from this motive.
And let me tell you a little secret. One of our Superintendents at a distance says that she finds she must not boast so much about St. Thomas’. Nor must you. People have heard too much about it. I dare say you remember the fine old Greek statesman who was banished because people were tired of hearing him called “The Just.” Don’t let people get tired of hearing you call St. Thomas’ “The Just” when you areaway from us. We shall not at all complain of your proving it “The Just” by your training and conduct.
I read lately in a well-known medical journal, speaking of the “Nightingale Nurses,” that the day is quite gone by when a novel would give a caricature of a Nurse as a “Mrs. Gamp”—drinking, brutal, ignorant, coarse old woman. The “Nightingale Nurse” in a novel, it said, would be—what do you think?—an active, useful, clever Nurse. These are the parts I approve of. But what else do you think?—a lively, rather pert, and very conceited young woman. Ah, there’s the rub. You see what our name is “up” for in the world. That’s what I should like to be left out. This is what a friendly critic says of us, and we may be very sure that unfriendly critics say much worse. Do we deserve what they say of us? That is the question. Let us not have, each one of us, to say “yes” in our own hearts. Christ made no light matter of conceit.
Keep the usefulness, and let the conceit go.
And may I here say a few words of counsel to those who may be called upon to be Night Nurses? One of these asked me with tears to pray for her.I do pray for all of you, our dear Night Nurses. In my restless nights my thoughts turn to you incessantly by the bedsides of restless and suffering Patients, and I pray God that He will make, thro’ you, thro’ your patience, your skill, your hope, faith and charity, every Ward into a Church, and teach us that tobethe Gospel is the only way to “preach the Gospel,” which Christ tells us is the duty of every one of us “unto the end of the world”—every woman and Nurse of us all; and that a collection of any people trying to live like Christ is a Church. Did you ever think how Christ was a Nurse, and stood by the bed, and with His own hands nursed and “did for” the sufferers?
But, to return to those who may be called upon to be Night Nurses: do not abuse the liberty given you on emerging from the “Home,” where you are cared for as if you were our children. Keep to regular hours by day for your meals, your sleep, your exercise. If you do not, you will never be able to do and stand the night work perfectly; if you do, there is no reason why night nursing may not be as healthy as day. (I used to be very fond of the night when I was a Night Nurse; I know what it is. But then I had my day work to do besides; you have not.) Do not turn dressy inyour goings out by day. It is vulgar, it is mean, to burst out into freedom in this way. There are circumstances of peculiar temptation when, after the restraint and motherly care of the “Home,” you, the young ones, are put into circumstances of peculiar liberty. Is it not the time to act like Daniel?... Let “the Judge, the Righteous Judge,” have to call us not the “Pharisees,” but Daniel’s band!
That is what I pray for you, for me, for all of us.
But what is it to be a Daniel’s band? What is God’s command to Night Nurses? It is—is it not?—not to slur over any duty—not the very least of all our duties—as Night Nurse: to be able to give a full, accurate, and minute account of each Patient the next morning: to be strictly reserved in your manner with gentlemen (“Thou God seest me”: no one else); to be honest and true. You don’t know how well the Patients know you, how accurately they judge you. You can do them no good unless they see that youlivewhat you say.
It is: not to go out showily dressed, and not to keep irregular hours with others in the day time.
Dare to have a purpose firm,Dare to make it known.
Dare to have a purpose firm,Dare to make it known.
Dare to have a purpose firm,Dare to make it known.
Watch—watch. Christ seems to have had aspecial word for Night Nurses: “I say unto you, watch.” And He says: “Lo, I am with you alway,” when no one else is by.
And he divides us all, at this moment, into the “wise virgins” and the “foolish virgins.” Oh, let Him not find any “foolish virgins” among our Night Nurses! Each Night Nurse has to stand alone in her Ward.
Dare to stand alone.
Dare to stand alone.
Dare to stand alone.
Let our Master be able to say some day that every one of the Patients has been the better, not only in body but in spirit—whether going to life or to death—for having been nursed by each one of you.
But one is gone, perhaps the dearest of all—Nurse Martha Rice.
I was the last to see her in England. She was so pleased to be going to Miss Machin at Montreal. She said it was no sacrifice, except the leaving her parents. She almost wished it had been, that she might have had something to give to God.
Now shehashad something to give to God: her life.
“So young, so happy: all so happy together,when in their room they were always sitting round the table, so cheerful, reading their Bible together. She walked round the garden so happy that last night.”
So pure and fresh: there was something of the sweet savour of holiness about her. I could tell you of souls upon whom she made a great impression: all unknowing: simply by being herself.
A noble sort of girl: sound and holy in mind and heart: living with God. It is scarcely respectful to say how I liked her, now she is an angel in heaven; like a child to Miss Machin, who was like a mother to her, loved and nursed her day and night.
“So dear and bright a creature,” “liked and respected by every one in the Hospital,” “and, as a Nurse, hardly too much can be said in her favour.” “To the Doctors, Patients, and Superintendent, she was simply invaluable.” “The contrast between these Nurses and the best of others is to be keenly felt daily”; “doing bravely”; “perfectly obedient and pleasant to their Superintendent.”
Was Martha conceited with all this? She was one of the simplest humblest Christian women I have ever known. All noble souls are simple, natural, and humble.
Let us be like her, and, like her, not conceited with it all. She was too brave to be conceited: too brave not to be humble.Shehad trained herself for the battle.
“With a nice, genial, respectful manner, which never left her, great firmness in duty, and steadiness that rendered her above suspicion”: “happy and interested in her charge.”
More above all petty calculations about self, all paltry wranglings, than almost any. How different for us, for her, had it not been so! Could we have mourned her as we do? The others of the small Montreal staff who miss her so terribly will like to hear how we feel this. They were all with her when she died. Miss Machin sat up with her every night, and either she or Miss Blower never left her, day or night, during the last nine days of her illness. She died of typhoid fever: peritonitis the last three weeks; but, as she had survived so long, they hoped against hope up to Easter Day.
About seven days before her death, during her delirium, she said: “The Lord has two wills: His will be done.” It is when we do not know what God’s will is to be, that it is the hardest to will what He wills.
Strange to say, on Good Friday, though she wasso delirious that there was difficulty in keeping her in bed, and she did not know what day it was, Christ on the Cross was her theme all the day long. “Christ died on the Cross for me, and I want to go and die for Him.” She had indeed lived for Him. Then on Easter Day she said to Miss Blower: “I am happy, so happy: we are both happy, so very happy.” She said she was going to hear the eighth Psalm. Shall we remember Martha’s favourite psalm? She spoke often about St. Thomas’.
She died the day after Easter Day. The change came at 7 in the evening, and she lived till 5 o’clock the next morning, conscious to the last, repeating sentences, and answering by looks when she could speak no more. Her Saviour, whom she had so loved and followed in her life, was with her thro’ the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and she felt Him there. She was happy. “My best love,” she said, “tell them it is all for the best, and I am not sorry I came out.”
Her parents have given her up nobly, though with bleeding hearts, with true submission to our Father’s will: theyaresatisfied it is “all for the best.”
All the Montreal Hospital shared our sorrow. The Doctors were full of kindness in their medicalattendance. Mr. Redpath, who is a principal Director, and Mrs. Redpath were like a real father and mother to our people. Martha’s death-bed and coffin were strewed with flowers.
Public and private prayers were offered up for her at Montreal during her illness. Who can say that they were not answered?
She spoke of dying: but without fear. We prayed that God would spare the child to us: but He had need of her.
Our Father arranged her going out: for she went, if ever woman did, with a single eye to please Him and do her duty to the work and her Superintendent. “Is it well with the child?” “It is well.” Let us who feel her loss so deeply in the work not grudge her to God.
As one of you yourselves said: “She died like a good soldier of Jesus Christ, well to the front.” Would any one of us wish it otherwise for her? Would any one of us wish a better lot for herself? There is but one feeling among us all about her: that she lived as a noble Christian girl, and that she has been permitted to die nobly: in the post of honour, as a soldier thinks it glorious to die. In the midst of our work, so surely do we Nurses think it glorious to die.
But to be like her we must have a mind like hers: “enduring, patient, firm, and meek.” I know that she sought of God the mind of Jesus Christ, “active, like His; like His, resigned”; copying His pattern: ready to “endure hardness.”
We give her joy; it is our loss, not hers. She is gone to our Lord and her Lord, made ripe so soon for her and our Father’s house. Our tears are her joy. She is in another room of our Father’s house. She bids us now give thanks for her. Think of that Easter morn when she rose again! She had indeed “another morn than ours”—that 17th of April.
Florence Nightingale.
Easter Eve, 1879, 6A.M.
My dear Friends,—I am always thinking of you, and as my Easter greeting, I could not help copying for you part of a letter which one of my brother-in-law’s family had from Col. Degacher (commanding one battalion of the 24th Regiment in Natal), giving the names of men whom he recommended for the Victoria Cross, when defending the Commissariat Stores at Rorke’s Drift. (His brother, Capt. Degacher, was killed at Isandhlwana.) He says:
“Private John Williams was posted, together with Private Joseph Williams and Private William Harrison (1/24th Regiment), in a further ward of the Hospital. They held it for more than an hour—so long as they had a round of ammunition left, when, as communication was for the time cut off, the Zulus were enabled to advance and burst open the door. A hand-to-hand conflict thenensued, during which Private Joseph Williams and two of the Patients were dragged out and assegaied (killed with a short spear or dagger).
“Whilst the Zulus were occupied with the slaughter of these unfortunate men, a lull took place, which enabled Private John Williams (who with two of the Patients were by this time theonly men left alivein the Ward) to succeed in knocking a hole in the partition and taking the two Patients with him into the next ward, where he found Private Henry Hook.
“These two men together, one man working whilst the other fought and held the enemy at bay with his bayonet, broke through three more partitions, and were thus enabled to bring eight Patients through a small window into the inner line of defence.
“In another ward facing the hill, William Jones and Private Robert Jones had been placed: they defended their post to the last, and until six out of seven Patients it contained had been removed. The seventh, Sergeant Maxfield, 2/24th Regiment, was delirious from fever, and although they had previously dressed him, they were unable to induce him to move; and when Private Robert Jones returned to endeavour to carry him off, hefound him being stabbed on his bed by the Zulus.
“Corporal Wm. Allen and Fd. Hitch, 2/24th Regiment, must also be mentioned. It was chiefly due to their courageous conduct that communication with the Hospital was kept up at all—holding together, at all costs, a most dangerous post, raked in reverse by the enemy’s fire from the hill. They were both severely wounded, but their determined conduct enabled the Patients to be withdrawn from the Hospital. And when incapacitated from their wounds from fighting themselves, they continued, as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out ammunition to their comrades throughout the night.”
These men who were defending the house at Rorke’s Drift were 120 of his (Col. Degacher’s) men against 5000 Zulus, and they fought from 3P.M.of January 22nd, to 5A.M.of the 23rd.Thereis a Night Nurse’s work for you. “When shall such heroes live again?” In every Nurse of us all. Every Nurse may at all costs serve her Patients as these brave heroic men did at the risk and the cost of their own lives.
Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses of Rorke’s Drift, who regarded not themselves,not their ease, not even their lives; who regarded duty and discipline; who stood to the last by God and their neighbour; who saved their post and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be like them, and fight through the night for our Patients’ lives—fight through every night and day!
Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship does for these men? Many a soldier loses his life in the field by going back to help a drowning or a wounded comrade, who might have saved it. Oh, let us Nurses all becomrades; stick to the honour of our flag and our corps, and help each other to the best success, for the sake of Him who died, as at this time, to save us all!
And let us remember that petty selfishnesses and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Unseen God, who sees all these little things when no one else does!
What makes us endure to the end? Discipline. Do you think these men could thus have fought at a desperate post through the livelong night if they had not been trained to obedience to orders, and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his own duty to the fullest extent—rather than everyman going his own way, thinking of his own likings, and caring for himself?
Howgreatmay be men and women, “little lower than the angels,” and also howlittle!
Humility—to think our own life worth nothing except as serving in a corps, God’s nursing corps, unflinching obedience, steadiness, and endurance in carrying out His work—that is true discipline, that is true greatness, and may God give it to us Nurses, and make us His own Nurses.
And let us not think that these things can be done in a day or a night. No, they are the result of no rough-and-ready method. The most important part of those efforts was to be found in the patient labour of years. These great tasks are not to be accomplished suddenly by raw fellows in a night; it is when discipline and training have become a kind of second nature to us that they can be accomplished every day and every night. The raw Native levies ran away, determining our fall at Isandhlwana. The well-trained English soldiers, led by their Officers and their Non-commissioned Officers, stuck to their posts.
Every feeling, every thought we have, stamps a character upon us, especially in our year of training, and in the next year or two.
The most unruly boys, weak in themselves—for unruliness is weakness—when they have to submit, it brings out all the good points in their characters. These boys, so easily led astray, they put themselves under the severest discipline, and after training sometimes come out the best of us all. The qualities which, when let alone, run to seed and do themselves and others nothing but harm, under proper discipline make fine fellows of them.
And what is it to obey? To obey means to do what we are told, and to do it at once. With the nurse, as with the soldier, whether we have been accustomed to it or not, whether we think it right or not, is not the question. Prompt obedience is the question. We are not in control, but under control. Prompt obedience is the first thing; the rest is traditional nonsense. But mind who we go to for our orders. Go to headquarters. True discipline is to uphold authority, and not to mind trouble. We come into the work to do the work....
We Nurses are taught the “reason why,” as soldiers cannot be, of much of what we have to do. But it would be making a poor use of this “reason why” if we were to turn round in anypart of our training and say, ornotsay, butfeel—We know better than you.
Would we be of less use than the Elephant? The Elephant who could kill a hundred men, but who alike pushes the artillery train with his head when the horses cannot move it, and who minds the children and carefully nurses them, and who threads a needle with his trunk. Why? Because he has been taught toobey. He would be of no use but to destroy, unless he had learnt that. Sometimes he has a strong will, and it is not easy for him to get his lesson perfect. We can feel for him. We know a little about it ourselves. But he does learn in time to go our way and not his own, to carry a heavy load, which of course he would rather not do, to turn to which ever side we wish, and to stop when we want him to stop.
So God teaches each one of us in time to go His way and not our own. And one of the best things I can wish each one of us is that we may learn the Elephant’s lesson, that is to obey, in good time and not too late.
Pray for me, my dear friends, that I may learn it, even in my old age.
Florence Nightingale.
London,May 16, 1888.
My dear Friends,—Here, one year more, is my very best love and heart-felt “good speed” to the work.
To each and to all I wish the very highest success, in the widest meaning of the word, in the life’s work you have chosen.
And I am more sorry than for anything else that my illness, more than usually serious, has let me know personally so little of you, except through our dear Matron and dear Home Sister.
You are going steadily and devotedly on in preparing yourselves for future work. Accept my heartiest sympathy and thanks.
We hear much of “Associations” now. It is impossible indeed to live in isolation: we are dependent upon others for the supply of all our wants, and others upon us.
Every Hospital is an “Association” in itself.Weof this School are an Association in the deepest sense, regulated—at least we strive towards it—on high and generous principles; through organisation working at once for our own and our fellow Nurses’ success. For, to make progress possible, we must make this interdependence a source of good: not a means of standing still.
There is no magic in the word “Association,” but there is a secret, a mighty call in it,ifwe will but listen to the “still small voice” in it, calling upon each of us to do our best.
It calls upon our dear heads, and they answer. It calls upon each of us.
We must never forget that the “Individual” makes the Association. What the Associationisdepends upon each of its members. A Nurses’ Association can never be a substitute for the individual Nurse. It is she who must, each in her measure, give life to the Association, while the Association helpsher.
Wehaveour dear heads. Thank God for them! Let us each one of us be a living member, according to her several ability. It is the individual that signifies—rather than the law or the rule.
Has not every one who has experience of the world been struck by this: you may have themost admirable circumstances and organisations and examinations and certificates, yet, if the individual allows herself to sink to a lower level, it is all but a “tinkling cymbal” for her. It is how the circumstances are worked that signifies. Circumstances are opportunities.
Rules may become a dead letter. It is the spirit of them that “giveth life.” It is the individual, inside, that counts, the level she is upon which tells. The rest is only the outward shell or envelope. She must become a “rule of thought” to herself through the Ruler.
And on the other hand, it strikes you often, as a great man has said, if the individual finds herself afterwards in less admirable circumstances, but keeps her high level, and rises to a higher and a higher level still—if she makes of her difficulties, her opportunities—steps to ascend—she commands her circumstances; she is capable of the best Nursing work and spirit, capable of the best influence over her Patients.
It is again, what the individual Nurseisand can do during herlivingtraining andlivingwork that signifies, not what she is certified for, like a steam-boiler, which is certified to stand so much pressure of work.
She may have gone through a first-rate course, plenty of examinations, and we may find nothing inside. It may be the difference between a Nurse nursing, and a Nurse reading a book on Nursing. Unless it bear fruit, it is all gilding and veneering: the reality is not there, growing, growing every year. Every Nurse must grow. No Nurse can stand still. She must go forward or she will go backward every year.
And how can a Certificate or public Register show this? Rather, she ought to have a moral “Clinical” Thermometer in herself. Our stature does not grow every year after we are “grown up.” Neither does it grow down. It is otherwise with our moral stature and our Nursing stature. We grow down, if we don’t grow up, every year.
At the present time, when there are so many Associations, when periodicals and publicity are so much the fashion, when there is such a dragging of everything before the public, there is some danger of our forgetting that any true Nursing work must be quiet work—an individual work. Anything else is contrary to the whole realness of the work.WhereamI, the individual, in my inmost soul?WhatamI, the inner woman called “I”? That is the question.
This “I” must be quiet yet quick; quick without hurry; gentle without slowness, discreet without self-importance. “In quietness and in confidence must be her strength.”
I must be trustworthy, to carry out directions intelligently and perfectly,unseenas well as seen; “unto the Lord”as well asunto men; no mere eye service. (How can this be if she is a mere Association Nurse, and not an individual Nurse?)
I must have moral influence over my Patients. And Icanonly have this bybeingwhat I appear, especially now that everybody is educated, so that Patients become my keen critics and judges. My Patients are watching me. They know what my profession, my calling is: to devote myself to the good of the sick. They are asking themselves: does that Nurse act up to her profession? This is no supposition. It is a fact. It is a call to us, to each individual Nurse, to act up to her profession.
We hear a good deal nowadays about Nursing being made a “profession.” Rather, is it not the question forme:am Iliving up to my “profession”?
But I must not crave for the Patient to be always recognising my services. On the contrary:the best service I can give is that the Patient shall scarcely be aware of any—shall recognise my presence most by recognising that he hasnowants.
(Shakespeare tells me that to be “nurse like” is to be to the Patient—