INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.

NURSES, HOSPITALS, WORKHOUSES, BARRACK-ROOMS.

A SECOND Edition of this little lecture (or essay, for I hardly know which to call it) being required within the short period of a month, I seize the opportunity to add a few words.

The principles here so briefly and so imperfectly announced have met with a reception altogether unexpected, and which certainly I do not take to be any testimony to the merit of the book, as such, but rather as a proof that it has struck upon a chord of feeling in the public mind, tuned and ready to vibrate to the most unpractised touch. So unlooked-for, indeed, has been the general expression of responsive sympathy, public and private, that the hand laid thus timidly and unskilfully upon the chords, almost "recoils from the sound itself hath made."

Not less have I been touched with pleasure and surprise by the numerous communications which almost every post has brought to me from medical men, from clergymen, from intelligent women (the greater number strangers to me personally), either expressive of cordial sympathy, or conveying practical suggestions, or offering aid and cooperation; all, however various the contents, testifying to the great truths I have endeavoured to illustrate in these pages: namely, that there exists at the core of our social condition a great mistake to be corrected, and a great want supplied; that men and women must learn to understand

each other, and work together for the common good, before any amount of permanent moral and religious progress can be effected; and that, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, we need SISTERS OF CHARITY everywhere.

In some few of these letters a tone of expostulation mingles with that of kind approval; and my attention is directed to various institutions which exist at present as filling up the want I have pointed out; -for instance, the efficiency of some of the Normal schools for the preparation of female teachers, and the encouragement which has been given to the houses established for training sick nurses, are especially dwelt upon. I learn that one of our most distinguished men entertains the project of organising "classes" for working-women, as he has already aided in elevating the mental and moral standard for the workingmen. Again, there are hopes that, in spite of all opposing influences, lessons in elementary physiology will be more generally introduced into schools. God forbid that we should be insensible to the efforts which have been made, and are extending in all directions, for the amelioration of crying social evils! But what we require is not more benevolence, but the general recognition of sounder and larger principles than have hitherto directed that benevolence. With all our schools of all denominations, it remains an astounding fact that one half of the women who annually become wives in this England of ours cannot sign their names in the parish register; that this amount of ignorance in the lower classes of women is accompanied by an amount of ill health, despondency, inaptitude, and uselessness in the so-called "educated classes;" which, taken together, prove that our boasted appliances are, to a great extent, failures.

And, first, with regard to the means afforded for training nurses for the sick. I would ask what is the number of Does it amount to one in every

women so trained?

500,000 of our female population? Does it amount to 100 altogether? and for whose service are these women trained? Are they distributed among our village poor, our country infirmaries? Up to a very recent period, till the need of nurses for the East excited public attention, were not the greater number of these trained nurses in the service of the rich? What is done is well done, perhaps; let us be thankful it is done; but is it sufficient? Does it meet those wants in the community which I have ventured to point out in the pages which follow?

Go into yon spacious hospital, provided with all that wealth, and skill, and knowledge can combine to heal or to ameliorate bodily suffering: see the floors how clean, the linen how spotless, the beds how comfortable! the most celebrated of our surgeons and physicians are in attendance; students from every part of England crowd thither; it is one of the best of our medical schools. Let us approach a bed; it is a poor pale girl, dying of a slow decline; she has been stretched there for eleven months; the chaplain duly visits her once or twice a week in her turn, for he has about five hundred other human souls to attend to. The physician, as he goes his rounds, pats her on the head; asks her, in a tone of unusual pity, the usual questions; then, perhaps, turns to two or three students who follow him, and almost aloud expresses his wonder to find her still alive. The nurse duly administers the prescription, and on pain of dismissal sees that every want is attended to. Is nothing else needed? Is anything else supplied? A melancholy religious tract, perhaps but for the spontaneous action of mind upon mind,—for tender, human, sympathising love,- for help to the sinking spirit,

:

- where are they? It is no answer to appeal to individual cases; to cite one or two hospitals, in which thoughtful and kindly women of the higher classes have been permitted to visit; — in which the superior intellect

and administrative faculties of the matron for the time being have exercised an improving influence. These are the exceptions; and until larger, higher principles of action are generally recognised, they will continue to be accidental exceptions to the prevalence of a narrow-minded mechanical system.

In several of the letters I have received, the condition of some of our workhouses, in town and country, is set forth at length and surely it is worth considering whether the administration of these institutions might not be improved by the aid of kindly and intelligent women sharing with the overseers the task of supervision.* The most conscientious men are apt to treat the wretched paupers as if they had neither hearts to be touched, nor souls to be saved. The paid matrons are taken from a class scarcely a grade above them; often as ignorant, as miserable, as debased as themselves, and wholly unfit to be intrusted with power. Do the aged, while swallowing, perforce the dregs of a bitter life, find any reverence, any pity? Do the children-poor little scraps of a despised humanity -find tenderness, freedom, or cheerfulness? Can any one doubt that the element of power disunited from the element of Christian love must, in the long run, become a hard, cold, cruel machine? and that this must of necessity be the result where the masculine energy acts independent of the feminine sympathies? The men who manage in their own way these abodes of destitution, dread, not without some reason, any troublesome interference with established routine through the intervention of impulsive womanly instincts, which, ill-trained, mis

* "The Workhouse Visiting Society," in connexion with the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, has been instituted since the first publication of these lectures; but it is as yet in its infancy, and the supervision of the ladies, rejected in some cases, is in others only tolerated rather than authorised. See the following lecture.