New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-12-29
THE TRAINED NURSE.
a Wider Sphere Suggested for Her by a
Medical Journal.

The edvent OF the trained has heretofore
benefited chiefly the two opposite extremes OF So
ciety. the very rich and the very poor. There re-
mains still great unnursed middle class. They
cannot afford the ordinary fees of trained nurse.
and the services of the district denied
to them. 4 British medical journal has proposed
a plan whereby this need may be met 1t proposes
the establishment Of homes from which visiting
nurses might work. charging moderate fees for
enc or two visits e day, as might be required.
In such a system It is suggested that advantages
other than che small fee might be found The
visiting would be suoh a burden to the
household the resident nurse. In all these huge
houses filed with flats. in all these rows of mean
suburban houses. there may be no extreme pow
erty, the paper points out. but there is no room
for q The young man in chambers, the
young woman IN her tiny fiat subject 10 at
tacks of influenza and rheumatism like the rest Of
mankind: they are probably living alone they earn
their living by small weekly wase-a wage very
likely not so high that OF a mechanic; but they
shrink from seeing the hospital they have no
brother sister at hand to help them and they
cannot house a resident nurse. can they errord
her fee. supply her many requirements. 1t
were, indeed worth while then to organize for all
London. and all big towns. nurses Of skill and
character could be trusted to visit such cases
daily, to take a moderate fee, and TO advise. II
necessary. removal to a hospital, or the securing
OF the services Of a permanent nurse
Not only the public but the nursing profession
would benefit by such a system it is asserted.
itself very kindly elderly and sober nurses who
have lost the feverish desire for the excitement
of the operating theatre and the longing to be en-
gagged constantly in a hand TO hand fight with
death. The strain of nursing work great
g few years ago that a theory got abroad that
nurse over fifty quite Of date. Now
have altered ali that; have come to recognize
that the young nurse has her limitations and that
the world is big enough TO offer work 10 all. and
that the OF sixty has her place in the
universe. And for the nursing of the middle class.
neither the young nor the very old should be
chosen; the responsibility will be great and the
work will be trying. 1t needs a steadfast worker
and a sober woman to visit successfully in the
fats and chambers and small houses in London.
There nurses who go TO district work
who find before long that their syInpathies become
oued by constant contact with sordid poverty that
the dirt and the Vernn fill them with such disgust
that they lose that sweet serenity OF soul which is
the core Of all good work. However much they
may pity their patients. they cannot do the work
cheerfully and well, and their powers plunted.
Such women emnently fitted for nursing the
hidden needs, call forth their sympathy without
Earring their suscepubilities: Il seems to them
much pitiful that the girl typst cannot af-
ford meat every day than that the dock laborer
should go bTeakfastless TO his task. If It be
'to each his suferrgs' it is also Ito each his
sympathies.' and If this organization for supply
ing visiting nurses is developed, there will
lacking those who will find their true sphere Of
work in IT, and render excellent service.