Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1904-12-23
OUR NEW PROFESSION.
The Trained Nurse as a Social Benefactor
Her Status and What Is Required Of

q
Her Status and What Is Required Of
Her.
The trained nurse is the latest produc
in the evolution of social science. which
seeks to mitigate and relieve in the high
est degree human physical suffering.
II Is not enough that medicine and sur
gerry with all the aid which mechanical
and chemical science can add to their ef-
fectiveness, shall be ready to use all their
resources for the relief Of the sick and
wounded Of our kind The gentle hands
and tender ministrations of women are
also needed. Who that has endured ex-
IRENE physical suffering has not realized
the truth Of the great Sir Walter Scott
invocation to the gentler sex;
30 woman. in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
BY the light qulverng aspen made;
When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"
Sweet as are these gentle ministrations.
how much more effective are they when
the woman at whose fair hands we re-
ceive them Is further equipped with skill
and knowledge. When, in the early fifties
Of the century which has just passed
away, Florence Nightingale appeared in
in the Crimean war, the figure of a lovely
and refined woman. minstering to the
bloody and mutiated victims of battle, or
to the fever stricken thousands OF the ar
my camps, astonished the world and
marked her as one almost angelic, but to-
day the trained nurse is in the hospitals
OF every great city, and among the sick
and wounded Of every army camp in the
civilized world. and she is truly a min
istering angel because her mind is stored
with all the knowledge that belongs to her
art and her def fingers are quick and
skilful to execute its demands
The great organized hospitals OF the
civilized world of today do not date very
far back into the past To the nations
of antiquity they were wholly unknown
and 1t was only after the thousands on
thousands OF men from every part OF Eu-
rope, returning from the Crusades,
brought with them and spread everywhere
leprosy and other Asiatic diseases that
hospitals were established, and they were
scarcely more than rude barracks in which
the infected persons were confined. with
but little medical care and attention
None of the existing hospitals dates be-
yond the sixteenth century, and II was
not until the eighteenth that such insti-
tutions really deserved a name
Ii was only in the nineteenth century
that the care Of the sick and wounded was
brought to any degree of scientific or
ganization and broadminded beneicence,
and the trained nurse is the last express
sion of this grand system OF benefaction.
The trained nurse OF today is not a mere
attendant. She must know about the APP
plication and action OF medicines, and the
preparation and application OF surgical
dressings. Ventilation. the maintenance
OF cleanliness in the person and surround
ings of the patient, the preparation and
quality of food, attention to the state of
mind OF the patient and the keeping up
OF cheerfulness. with at the same time
all the rest and quiet that the case may
require, are some of the duties Of the
nurse, and to that end she must study for
years professional textbooks, and at the
same time practice at the bedside in all
sorts of cases. With such training the
nurse becomes professional person.