The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1878-04-30 00:00:00

" There Ls no fold hnorev?r watched and tended.

Brt on. ir-a.rl-i-ar;b-ii
There is no fireside tiorreciej defended,
But bath one vacant chair.
Sooner or later nursing the s sic is • duty that comes
to every one, and mikes people have been accustomed
to sick rooms there is no sphere where more awkward.
flees and helplessness is developed. Young people,
especially, who have never had "to pot out their
hands" at • sick bed, are frightened to Conch • sick
person, and this is all the MOTO deplorable when we
consider the dependent condition of an invalid, and
how willing the young nurse would be to help and aid
ff she only knew how.
As we do not know how soon we may be called on
occupy the bed of sickness, neither do we know how
quickly we may be summoned to the bedside of the
sufferer, and if we are deficient in practical experience
which is e best of all teacher., we should at lesei the
endeavour to make ourselves acquainted with the
principles of the art of sick nursing, so that the head
may guide the bands when they are called upon.
Birk nursing may be divided into five branches,
via, attendance on the patient—remedial appliances
—sick room cookery—management of the sick room—
disinfection of patient and chamber.
I therefore propose to take op each of the branches
in separate papers, and lay before the readers of the
Agrkafiorsi Gazette such hints and suggestions as may
appear worthy of their attention, trusting they may
be found useful to those who hove not enjoyed oppor-
tunities of otherwise informing themselves.
I. AITINDANCI ON ?NH PaTTINT.—It bile been
justly remarked " it is not every one who possesses
the beautiful gift of musing," but even where the
Heaven-born talent Jo denied, much of its spirit end
usefulness may he acquired. The sick nurse should
maintain • cheerful, sober spirit, losing sight of selfish
troubles that she might mitigate those cf her charge,
Only they who have been laid mile by sickness know
the weary, restless days and nights that have to
be undergone, and • gloomy, dieconsolate nurse would
aggrarate the already cheerios@ impact of everything
around; while • too gay thoughtless demeanour,
would bespeak a want of sympathy m re trying still
to the already greatly tried sufferer. As the sick have
no strength of their own to fall back upon, it is of the
utmost importance for the nurse to prudes presence
of mind under difficulties, and so gain that confidence
and sense of perfect reliance which at once soothes
and sustains the patient.
Bo much for the ethical part of the subject; let um
now tato to the mat-risl.

The dress of the sit curve should be soft and limber,
yet clean and pleasant to the eye, and the oboes should
also be of some Daimler stuff, for sickisople often
become very sensitive tc sights and soup and surely
If there be a time to study what may be led whims,
It is when people an weak sad cannot control the
fancies that take pOSIOSIdOn of them. A sick nurse
should never he long anent from the room, unless the
patient is well enough to amiss himself, or she can
leave a substitute behind her, with orders to call us
her if wanted. A watchful, intelligent nurse I. like a
right hand to a doctor, and she has this advantage
over him, that she has the patient always under her
eye. She should, therefore, in acute illness, take
note of the changes from hour to hour, and report
faithfully, without diminishing or adding to, avoiding
all esaggended language and circuml 'cation, plainly
stating simple facts wkhout canniest or Interpolation.
Claudine' and attention to the patient's skin are
such obvious matters sa hardly to seem worth haat-
ing on • and yet how often the simplest rules an
neglectid became their importance is underrated. Pure
air and clean lbw are like fresh life to the sick. and
at the same UMW the body should be carefully sponged to
keep the pores of the skin open, and for the mans] of
filthy matter. If a little vinegar be added to the water
It will cool and refresh the patient still further.
A sheet folded in four and laid below the trunk is
*sally removed, and keeps the bed-linen clean. A
square of macintosh Is useful for the same purpose, but
Is not always at hand, neither is it so soft and comfort-
able as the folded sheet. Though not generally
acknowledged, hod sores are frequently nothing but the
result of dirt and bad management A petient who is
sorn_pnlously dry and clean will seldom develop
them. m they threaten, the rutty* shouliteje
cloths dipped in spirits, which hardens and
the skin. A pad also, to relieve the part from
pensure, gives great ease. It should be nude of
sufficint ironer and of a round ahem with a hole
I. the centre to come under the part affected, but in
this most painful concomitant of illness, as in other
things, "prevention is better than cure."
In a lingering illness it is often a great comfort to
an invalid to be frequently moved and turned, and it
Is saTageol strength to the nurse and • gratification
to the t when he can do something towards it
himself; soft ropes, made of any old material torn In
wide strips, attached to the foot and each side of the
bed head, enables him to do this; indeed, it is astonish-
ing what a patient can do towards moving himself by
the aid of this leversge, when without it helm perfectly
helpless. A comfortable rest for the back may also
be made by folding a woollen shawl in four, and I
attaching long strings to each corner, to be fanned to
the foot of the bed after the shawl has been ;mead
round the patient's back. Of oourse it can only be
used when the head can do without support, but foe
• convalescing patient able to at up in bed, or during 1
meals, it is invaluable.
lipealeng of support to the heed, nothing tries the
WWI of tE. nurse more, in a small way, than the
arranging of the pillows; and unless they are at the
;=angle,alas I for peen, either to nurse or
t. This reminds me ci the naive remark of •
worthy woman who woe living with her second
husband, and was contenting his good qualities with
his siossnor's, who had departed this if, after •
long illness.
Matthew," she said, "Is an easy done man, 1
but as for John Brown, I could na' put • pillow below
his bead to please him all the seven months he lay •
dying." If the quandarn Mrs. Brown had set rightly
aut arranging the pillows, she might have had a
better account to give of both herself and the Invalid;
but If she pursued the plan followed by most people,
of bumping than up till they are too high and then
thumping them down again till they are too low, it is
not to be wondered at that she never achieved senses.
When about to ae the pillows, the nurse should
stand just at the patient's shoulder, and facing the
head bf the bed' n, with the near arm round him,
ganti lift the patient to the desired position, and with
the hand pile the pillows in at the back till
the necesearr support is given. This saves all QUO.
tioning as to whedser or not they will do, and which,
after several fruitless aorta at comfort, the weary
invalid often answers in the affirmative, rather than be
troubled further.
There is nothing worse for an excitable patient, or
one gaming /14301 • febrile disorder, than to have
promiscuous talking going on in the apartment, and
• nuns, if she have a compsnion, 'should Dever indulge
in this, or allow anyone to do so ; it disturbs the
patient, and aggravates the tendency to light-headed-
ness which any weakening illness always more or lam
produces. It le nothing abort M crusity to allow
tailing (in which the patient cannot join, but to which
he mann help listening) to go on in bis presence, and
low well-meaning people do it without being at all
aware of the evil. It is the province of the nurse to
see to this, as well as many other matters, which an
observant perm will not be slow to find out for her-
self—always remembering that what would be looked
upon as Odes to a healthly pawn may be of Laminas
moment to the diseosed.—A. la O. S.

Rnaures Pants Burt —The 'narked superiority of
Wm Laundry Blue over all others, and the quick ap-
preciation of its merino by the public, hae bees
attended by the usual results—vii.. a good of knits.
tioas : the merit of the latter mainly omelets in the
itievanity meted, mot simply in lmiatlni the square
sham but leaking the d th•
wrappers ressaible that ortiLandia=aranartrge. The
IV=her thereto" to caution el bayou to
rads sue ea soh NAO.

POSSIBLE HELLS.
It seems to have been settled to the general satisfao-
t" eustetY that If, by any remote chance, there
should be such a thing as • life beyond the gruyl the
ce existen of a monstrosity like the antiquated C via-
ietk bell I, odsclusirelY &Trawled. It may mime
hilosophers and persons to diems In the Me, of
'thoughtful" review. whether Om universe contains
any provision for on eternity of torture; but ladies
and gentleman of • practical turn of mind have decided
that, the problem cannot affect them persooally, and
has no more real interest or iMIXIlia:100 for the
human race than the number of angels who can dance
on a needle's point, at any other purely scholastic
thesis. Assuming for • moment that Messrs. Tyndall.
Huxley, and Harrison are wrong, that conecirmsnese
Is not at an end when the breath deserts the body and
Ithe processes of natural resolution commenc•—•
perfectly gratuitous amumPtion, no doubt—they have
mem to know that Dante's Inferno leaf but the
ewe. of ...tame nightmare, and that the fiery pit
and undying worm of the New Testament are purely
figurative expressions, translated into grim realities
only by the °°,:re.dil,:ms=a, Ilona and materialising
InseX:Lots 0, rltOuguant to the modem
in • and therefore wholly inconsistent with
true Piet? 'and genuine religion. On this point at
least there is • practical agreement between the
scientific platform and the eadesiastical pulpit.
Canoes Farrar is at one on the more momentous issues
of existence with Professor Clifford; and though it
may be unwise and premature to proclaim the fact to
the lower orders, there is certainly no bell. A few
centuries ago the world was agitated by (Reputes which
• handful of logicians originated on the subject of the
real existence of abstract qualities, and blows and
bloodshed were caused in more than one continental
riders became an irreverent sceptic openly declared
that, though there were many black and white objects '
on earth, no such thing as whiteness or blackness,
apart from those objects, could be found. Phe world
smiles at the folly of these controversies now; and
the time is coming when all polite and well-informed •
persons will recollect with pitying mtampt that in
the present year of grace, any one could believe in the
reality of the Christian equivalent of the Pagan
Tartarus or the Hebraic tffenna. We are coming
round, in fact, to the old Cioeronian standpoint:
ether the dead are nothing, or they are not unhappy;
and the fond belief of society is that, should its
Immortality ever be practically established, the soul
will not long be kept waiting on the tareshold of ever-
lasting beatitude Society may not perhaps, in all
cases, consider itself immediately eligible for the
fruition Of never-ending joys; but it ham made up its
mind that the only preliminary ordeal will be one of a
not
ulemesing penitential melancholy, and it has
successfully purged the atmosphere of the great
unknown of all suspicion of sulphureous odours.
There is no necessity rudely to dispel this gratifying,
and, as many excellent people doubtless think, highly
orthodox, conception of the brief probationary gems
through which humanity may still have to passe when
It ha, bidden adieu to earthly temptations, frailties,
and sorrows, and is awaiting its indestructible reward.
Hamlet wss not without misgiving' as to the dreams
which might disturb the sleep of the sepulchre • and
when once the probability of the sense of kantity
surviving the rites of burial is allowed, • host of con-
tingencies suggest themselves which are scarcely to be I
contemplated with perfect equanimity. Pond of
luxury and show; absorbed in the pursuit of its own
pleasures, and the manufactory of its own scandals;
diligently averting its stance from the man of want
and misery, of hideous brutality and Unmemorable
soffering,--eociety may well he visited with some
twinges of unsadness, if it once fairly realises the
pesibility of a poetbutnous consciousness. It may
feed its soul—that is, if it has a soul —and feast its
on on the heaven of the Ritualists, the
stltafernsalsm, of which the pale and small reflection
Is to be seen in some half-dosen London churches,
decorated in the highest style of florid ornament,
fragant with mystic odours—• parodies of decorative 1
eclecticism, combining the prismatic hues of the
rainbow with the mellower splendours of • pre-
Rapluslite drawinroom. What if the actual
experience should not that of a metaphorical
parade ws, but of • d which may be seen at any
moment in this short space of our mortal life, and
whose unlovely aspect society persistently Ignores;
Imagine the soul or, to avoid all debateable
gurogy, imagine • smuts of consciownsess--which
es7t4 tames has exercised itself in an existence of
sweet sights, musical sounds, delicious fragrances,
suddenly plunged in a sphere of hideous deformity and
astruciotis stench ; knowing this only, that it is present,
and that it is doomed to be present. as the invisible
witness of the wretchedness, the squalor, the filth
of the sin and crime—not as crime and sin in
the polite world are, accompanied by all that
bewitches the senses, lulls the passions with a
pleasing languor, or heats them with • picturesque
warmth, and robs the sin itself of half its groomer
—which are the conditions of the daily existence of
who shall say how many hundreds of thousands of
society's fellow-creatures In thia favoured England?
Evil, as Hood has told us in one of the most powerful
of hie poems, the Lady's Drelm—• poem which it
would be • good and seasonable devotional exercise at
this Eastertide for many of our readers attentively
to study—" evil is wrought by want of thought as well
as want of heart;' and it would be became the
spectator of this agonising misery wee not heartless
that the spectacle of it would constitute a penalty so
Intolerable, There is nothing rare, and there is noth-
ing specially admirable, in the sympathy which cannot
endure to think of the woe and want in the world;
which feels that, if these were ones fairly realised,
paralysis must follow, and action become impossible
under the stupefying shadow of one greet eclipse.
Surely it is not impossible, perhaps it is not even
unreasonable, to conceive of a state of consciousness
In which the power of excluding that which is made
unknowable by its intrinsic hideousness from the ken
would be no more, and the hall of • suffering not its
own, yet made its own, and worse than its own, by
a sympathy that would refuse to be checked, would
open its horrors to the sensitive spirit. What
plummet can sound the abysms of hopeless misery, of
physical torment, of pervading joylessness scarcely
worse than pain, in which • multitude of our working
classes live and die? Let those who would form some
faint notion of this read Mies Octavio Hill's descrip-
tion of • London court on a fine sumnrr evening,
Miss Cobb,', remarks on wife-torture in England,
half a dome pages of the reports of the Society for
the Protection of Women and Children, or the
Parliamentary Blue-book on the note of the law relat-
ing to brutal assaults. The agonies of a human spirit
imorisoned in a wild beset have been the subject of
many an old-world fable; but such • lot would be
Infinitely preferable to that of • human spirit haunted
by the fiendish cruelties and the blond-curdling
sufferings of his own kind. The gentle, dainty,
delicately bred women, who is sickened by the mere
thought of pain; the exquisitely fastidious ear, the
cultivated sympathetic mind,—place these in imaginary
jurtaposilon, not for • day, an hour, or s week. but
for generations and centuries, with the beating and
mutilation of women and children, the loathsome
bestialities of sight and sound amid which, even in
London, countless men and women are doomed to
dwell, and then oak whether • very fair substitute for
the medieval hell has not been found-
Theologians have told us that if mortality's could
trace the ccossouences of • single sin thro • long
succession of years, could me the circle of to results
growing in width and not losing in distinctness at each
stage, the mortal conscience would he aghast, and
would be smitten with a conviction that for such an
attune agar* the very laws of the universe no
punishment could be unjust. The dawn cider toads
of a clear continuous perception of the Nemesis of
hereditary Iniquities, the sudden irresistible flashing
upon the spirit of the full relations between came and
effect, in the world of moral agencies, would be •
penalty that might compensate an avenging deity for
baring surrendered his prerogative of the infliction of
Wielldag physical torture. The greatest of Greek
philosophers, who failed to antkipate little in the
Inventions of subsequisat ages, and nothing in the
systems of Bacon and Mill, suggested that the dead
were affected by the varying fortunes of their
descendants, much as the oar is by a muffled sound,
or as the maims. in • theatre is by horrors which are
enacted off the stage. It may be traded that even
Aristotle exaggerated the cognisance which the
entombed ancestor is permitted. Sr compelled, to take
of his posterity. Suppose that he did not; suppose
that the sort of oonesiougnms of which he was
speculatively in favour Is even less dull than he bad
imagined,—what is the commentary of our latter-day
expeimoss upon the doctrine? If the bards of our
own time could and inspiration in the themes which
their metrical progenitors fitted to their lyre, Mr.
Tennysou's tale of the Talkiag Oak might be told In a
much more impressive fashion • and there might isms
from some primeval tree—destined by the lord of the
deasesue, who adopted the view of timber that it is an
excrescence of the earth placed there by Providence for
the payment of debts—• wail which would thrill with
more than pity the soul of his sires It is • terrible
thought that the infant, all dimples and innocence,
may grow up to be • forger or murderer, to be
sentenced to penal servitude or to be hung. What
worse hell can the spirit of torture keel( conceive for
the ancestor proud of his blameless life and high
descent, for the father whose religion is the high
destiny of his holes, for the matron whose purity no
shade of stain has ever chequered, than the eras-
haunting knowledge that a deep blot has euddenly
been dashed upon the great escutcheon, that • splendid
name is being deliberately dragged through the mire,
that the career of • gifted son or • fair daughter is •
synonym for infamy and shame? Society may have
proved to itself that the old hell of the theologians has
ceased to exist, but it will hardly be able so easily to
'eddy iteelt that there are not abundant alternative
hells of its own manufacture, unless, indeed, it lends •
paramount and mechanical credence to the materialism
which is popular chiefly because it is found to act as a
sop to conscience.