The record-union., 1897-03-30

overcrowded. At the top Of the list is
the nurse who loves her profession for
it's own sake, and whose natural ca
pabability would have found vent
whether she had training or not. This
kind of nurse is precious, above price.
The nurse who is working for money
does we'll also, provided she has excep-
tional intelligence, and comprehen-
sion of the fact that only by a faithful
discharge of her duties will she get
good paying cases. Her ambition for
a successful career stands to her pa
tients in the stead of the genuine inter-
est that the born nurse displays. There
is always a proportion of Indifferent
nurses, those who work merely for the
wages and because they have to, not
having stumbled on any other vOca-
ton. Last in the list are those who go
into nursing for the excitement of the
thing.
1.-The excitement? Yes. Say young
woman lives in little, interior town.
where things move along slowly, or
rather don't move at all, and she Graves
a more stimulating existence. She
thinks over her capabilities and limta
tions, and considers that, if she is an
acceptable probationer, she will be taken
on at the big city hospital, and not only
get her living, but be paid a stipend be-
sides. I'll go down to the hospital,
she decides. There will be a lot of
young doctors there and lot of girls
and I'll have little fun sandwiched in
with the work 1t is needless to say
that although she stands the cleaning
and scrubbing and various disagreeables
that fall to the probationer's share, she
seldom is heard of in nursedom after
graduation. 1t is for just such as she
that the probationer's month or six
weeks of trial is made uncompromis
ingly hard. 1t is contrived for the sur
vival of the fitteSt The greatest trOu
bic that the governors and matrOns
have to contend with in the hospitals
is the craving for excitement and
gayety on the part of the young nurses.
That is why, when the nurses give a
ball or a reception, the doctors in the
hospital are excluded from the list of
invitations, an arrangement that breeds
dissatisfaction. 1t is perfectly natural
that the young people should like to be
together, but nonsense demoralizes their
purpose. Another phase of nursing
which has come under my notice is the
fact that woman who will work like
Trojan over critical case that enlists
her interest will make the poorest kind
of convalescent nurse. She will do her
culean things in the way of unselfish-
ness and devotion as long as the pa
tents life is in danger, and then flag
altogether and be a mere figurehead
when the crisis is passed. The good
convalescent nurse is perhaps the finer
development. The nature that can dis
play patience and evenness in small
things, and keep on in beaten track
that is never likely to win her much
praise, must be superior to the temper
ament that needs sharp emergency to
stimulate it,
It is interesting to bark back to the
days when the trained nurse was an un-
known quantity, or at best an expert
ment. 1t is twenty three years since the
first class of nurses was graduated
in New York. Previously the women i'm
prisoned for reform were utilized as
nurses in the city institutions-those
who had been sent to the Island, and
who for the most part had a weakness
for intoxicating beverages.
Patients left to the tender mercies of
these haphazard nurses had time of
it, says doctor who was in authority
at that period. There was no surety
that any prescribed stimulant or tonic
ever reached it's rightful destination.
and so demoralized did things become