The record-union., 1897-03-30

| that several times after a poStmortem
examination had been held the women
sent to clean up the room were found
dead drunk on the floor in various atti-
tudes. They had actually imbibed the
alcohol in which the specimens had
| been placed for preservation. 1t was
enormities like these that prepared the
way for the trained-nurse epoch.
| 'I well remember the first trained
nurse that was introduced into my
| family" said lady much interested
| in hospital work. MY aunt was Ill.
She was i'll three months with pneumo-
mia. The continuity of our family life
that summer was constantly broken into
| by her need of nursing. FIRST my
| mother would go and stay week, tneh
nv cousin, then my cousins S SlSler-lh-
| law. each and all returning completeiy
| tagged out. Occasionally reiatlVe
| from New Brunswick or some other
point would arrive on the scene, ana
wait on the invalid night and day as
| long as she was able. Sometimes my
uncle himself would take dash at
the nursing, and each time after this
| devotion on his part the patient would
have a backset Finally / heard OF
nurse. not a trained nurse, as we now
call them. but a woman who had been
employed in a family for years as nurse
maid to the children, whom we could
get to care for our invalid. The chill
dren she had tended had grown up and
the woman's services were at our dis
posal. l went to my aunt's and
broached the subject as gently as
fnI hal there PO1lld
be any intelligent administering of the
medicines as long as her nurses were
changed so frequently and were of such
divers descriptions; that we wanted her
to have the best of care, and to allow
! this good woman to win her back to
health. The vigor with which she sat
up in bed on hearing this frightened
me. l feared 1 had over-excited her
and that I had worked evil.
"'Olivia' she exclaimed in a tone of
CONSERVATION, do you think it possible
| that a paid attendant could take the
place of my own flesh and blood?'
I'VE got round her afterward some
way, however, and she consented to
have the nurse. Just after the Florence
| Nightingale craze and the publication
of Ia and Her Paupers' and other
works on nursing had reused public in
| terest in the subject we got two Mary
| land women, sisters, as nurses at the
| hospital. When trained nursing first
came into vogue it was taken up by
| ladies almost entirely. Afterward there
| was a change; the ladies seemed to
| drop out and a more ordinary element
| crept in. In the last few years the gem
tlefolk have taken it up again.
well, I happened to be in the hos
pital kitchen one morning soon after
these Maryland women were installed
and one of them came in; noticed that
| she did not speak to the matron You
did not say good morning to the man.
ager,' I said afterwards; why was
that? The manager did not say good
| morning to me- she answered I tried
| to intimate that she was in a subor-
dinate position and must show the ma
tron proper respect, but I could make
no impression on her. We never could
do anything with either of those
| women, and yet they were intelligent
and refined and were cultivated in a
degree. At night they went to bed and
to sleep and resented being called up
for anything. / recollect there was an
ill delirious patient, and upon calling
one morning I asked after her condi-
ton. She is as we'll as could be ex-
pected after walking about in the cold
hall all night the doctor told me.
Those incomprehensible nurses had
taken themselves to bed and left that
i'll woman to her own devices.