Miss Ann Preston, one of the most refined as well as talented and
learned female physicians, in a published article, gives valuable
instruction as to the training, of nurses. She claims that every woman
should be trained for this office, and that some who have special
traits that fit them for it should make it their daily professional
business. She remarks that the indispensable qualities in a good nurse
are common sense, conscientiousness, and sympathetic benevolence: and
thus continues:
"God himself made and commissioned one set of nurses; and in doing
this and adapting them to utter helplessness and weakness, what did
he do? He made them to love the dependence and to see something to
admire in the very perversities of their charge. He made them to humor
the caprices and regard both reasonable and unreasonable complainings.
He made them to bend tenderly over the disturbed and irritated, and
fold them to quiet assurance in arms made soft with love; in a word,
he made _mothers!_ And, other things being equal, whoever has most
maternal tenderness and warm sympathy with the sufferer is the best
nurse." And it is those most nearly endowed by nature with these
traits who should be selected to be trained for the sacred office of
nurse to the sick, while, in all the moral training of womanhood, this
ideal should be the aim.
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