V
_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 that _intelligent_ obedience
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’t _train_ ourselves 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_--IF she
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 only _know_ a thing
if we can _do_ it. 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 be _one_ in Him and in His _work_!
God speed us all!
Amen in our hearts.
I
These are some of the little things we need to attend to:
To be a Nurse _is_ to 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 do _all_ Nursing 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 your neighbour. 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 not _slamming_
every 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 to be 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 being _consistent_ in 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 drink _or 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 in the Wards, where
cleanliness and fresh air--there can be no pure air without
cleanliness--not so much give life as _are_ the 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, or at
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, seeking _ourselves_ in 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 well _may_ be 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 are away 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 to _be_ the 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
in your 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 you _live_ what 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.
Watch--watch. Christ seems to have had a special 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.
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 she _has_ had 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. _She_ had 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 was so 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: they _are_ satisfied it is “all
for the best.”
All the Montreal Hospital shared our sorrow. The Doctors were full of
kindness in their medical attendance. 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.