Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1891-09-24
In WOMAN'S BEHALF.
A MISSING ARI.
The One Thing That IL Needed to Com
plcte Girls Education.


plcte n Girls Education.
II is surely to be wished that every
one of our girls, on leaving school, or
rather upon finishing the course pre-
scribed in their textbooks, should take
another course, of shorter or longer du-
ration, and that in hospital training
school for nurses. They are all taught,
as much from observation as any thing
else, that fainting person should
be laid on the back and famed, and
freed from any constraint of clothing
about the waist or throat, that piece
OF hot flannel is good for rheumatism
and growing pain; that hot lemonade
at bedtime is good for a cold; that BIZ
carbonate of soda is good for acidity;
that they had best not sit between a
fever patient and the fire, or attend, be-
fore eating, any one suffering from a
contagious Illness, or come into such
presence while perspiring; and that is
about all they know in relation to i'll
ness
1t might not be desirable that they
should know any thing more of the life
of the sick-room, since their youth is
the time for light-heartedness and Joy,
and one would spare them all that pos
sibly they might be spared. But by
and-by, youth passing, or the necessity
having arisen through love, the need
of knowing more may come to them
with force bitterer than any direct
knowledge of pain and suffering they
could have gained in a three or six
months course in hospital ward.
What suffering would be saved to
themselves as well as to those they
love in that by and by if, for instance,
they knew enough, at sight of the swift
pulsing jet from severed artery, to tie
the bandage between the heart and the
cut; if they knew that hot water shuts
up the blood-vessels and prevents con-
| gestion and the black and- blue mark of
bruise where the little toddler has
bumped his head; if they knew that the
wasting and fatiguing night-swea of
consumption could be lessened, if not
hindered, by sponge bath with salt
water just before sleep, or that the dis
gushing after-favor of cod-liver oil
could be turned into the taste of deli
cate little Blue Point oyster by quick
ly drunk glass of water in which bit
of iron has rusted; that in sudden cases
of poisoning, warm thin mustard water
will empty the stomach as soon as any
thing that can be ordered in the apoth-
ecarys cabalistic characters and that
if corrosive sublimate has been swal-
lowed, following it at once with the
white of an egg will turn it into what
is known as blue mass, and let the vic
tim escape with a salvation; that a pa
tient can be bathed in bed without let
ting any moisture escape upon clothes
or sheets, if, the sponge being squeezed,
the back of the bather's hand is hur-
riedly turned and wiped on handy
thick towel before applying the sponge
to the surface of the skin. If they
knew how to make panado, or
an agreeable decoction of toast
water, to cure hiccough, to
take a poultice, to adj
minister an enema, how much better
off they would be than where their
ignorance obliges them to see those
they love suffer, or else have some one
else, better informed than themselves
give their dear ones the relief they
themselves are longing to give! How
much better off would they and all con-
cerned be if they only knew how to
make the bed for the sick-not in the
fashion they have always thought sutfi-
cient, with the under sheet we'll tucked
in at the head, and the upper sheet well
tucked in at the foot, but with the I'M
der sheet drawn tightly as possible,
and fastened by means of strong safety
pins at the four corners, the sides and
top and bottom, so that not wrinkle
may come to tease the poor sleepless
wretch tossing and turning for relief
In fact, the things seem countless
with which a woman, as now educated,
finds herself unacquainted And for
the sake of their own future happiness,
to say nothing of the well-being OF
those for whose comfort in time of sick
ness they are responsible, it would be
well it, before our girls began their
careers of pleasures-their dances and
lunches and teas and other amuse-
ments, however innocent-they had
first received the diploma that might be
given them for skill in some of the
simpler branches of the great art Of
nursing the -Harper's Bazaar.