Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not / by Florence Nightingale.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not / by Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    erally so afraid that they frequently follow the very practice in regard to it which they ought to avoid. Nothing used to be considered so infectious or contagious as small-pox; and people not very long ago used to cover up patients with heavy bed clothes, while they kept up large fires and shut the windows. Small-pox, of course, under this regime, is very infectious. People are somewhat wiser now in their management of this dis- ease. They have ventured to cover the patients lightly and to keep the windows open ; and we hear much less of the infection of small-pox than we used to do. But do people in our days act with more wisdom on the subject of infection in fevers—scarlet fever, measles, &c.—than their forefathers did with small-pox? Does not the popular idea of infection involve that people should take greater care of themselves than of the pa- tient % that, for instance, it is safer not to be too much with the patient, not to attend too much to his wants 1 Perhaps the best illustration of the utter absurdity of this view of duty in attending on infectious diseases is afforded by what was very recently the practice, if it is not so even now, in some of the European lazarets— in which the plague-patient used to-be condemned to the horrors of filth, overcrowding, and want of ventilation, while the medical attendant was ordered to examine the Nay, more, I have seen diseases begin, grow up, and pass into one another. Now, dogs do not pass into cats. I have seen, for instance, with a little overcrowding, continued fever grow up; and with a little more, typhoid fever; and with a little more, typhus, and all in the same ward or hut. Would it not be far better, truer, and more practical, if we looked upon disease in this light ? For diseases, as all experiences hows, are adjectives, not noun substantives. 2*