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from men in learning and working by certain superstitions of a conventional morality, and in social position by the whole spirit and tendency of our past legislation, their material existence and interests are regarded as identical; identical however only in this sense - that the material and social interests of the woman are always supposed to be merged in those of the man; while it is never taken for granted that the true interests of the man are inseparable from those of the woman: so at the outset we are met by inconsistency and confusion, such as must inevitably disturb the security and integrity of all the mutual relations.

Here then I take my stand, not on any hypothesis of expediency, but on what I conceive to be an essential law of life; and I conclude that all our endowments for social good, whatever their especial purpose or denomination educational, sanitary, charitable, penal-will prosper and fulfil their objects in so far as we carry out this principle of combining in due proportion the masculine and the. feminine element, and will fail or become perverted into some form of evil in so far as we neglect or ignore it.

HOSPITALS.

I WILL now proceed to illustrate my position by certain facts connected with the administration of various public institutions at home and abroad.

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And, first, with regard to hospitals.

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What is the purpose of a great hospital? Ask a physician or a surgeon, zealous in his profession: he will probably answer that a great hospital is a great medical school in which the art of healing is scientifically and experimentally taught; where the human sufferers who crowd those long vistas of beds are not men and women, but cases to be studied: and so under one aspect it ought to be, and must be. A great, well-ordered medical school is absolutely necessary; and to be able to regard the various aspects of disease with calm discrimination, the too sensitive human sympathies must be set aside. Therefore much need is there here of all the masculine firmness of nerve and strength of understanding. But surely a great hospital has another purpose, that for which it was originally founded

and endowed, namely, as a refuge and solace for disease
and suffering. Here are congregated in terrible reality all
the ills enumerated in Milton's visionary lazar-house,-
"All maladies

Of ghastly spasm or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, wide-wasting pestilence"

I spare you the rest of the horrible catalogue. He goes

on

"Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch."

But why must despair tend the sick? We can imagine a far different influence "busiest from couch to couch!" There is a passage in Tennyson's poems, written long before the days of Florence Nightingale, which proves that poets have been rightly called prophets, and see "the thing that shall be as the thing that is.' I will repeat the passage. He is describing the wounded warriors nursed and tended by the learned ladies.

"A kindlier influence reigned, and everywhere

Low voices with the ministering hand

Hung round the sick. The maidens came, they talked,

They sung, they read, till she, not fair, began

To gather light, and she that was, became

Her former beauty treble; to and fro,

Like creatures native unto gracious act,

And in their own clear element they moved."

This you will say is the poetical aspect of the scene: was it not poetical too when the poor soldier said that the very shadow of Florence Nightingale passing over his bed seemed to do him good?

But to proceed. The practical advantages, the absolute necessity of a better order of nurses to take the charge and supervision of the sick in our hospitals, is now so far admitted that it is superfluous to add anything to what I said in my former Lecture. It is not now maintained that a class of women, whom I have heard designated by those who employ them as drunken, vulgar, unfeeling, and inefficient, without any religious sense of responsibility, and hardened by the perpetual sight of suffering, are alone eligible to nurse and comfort the sick poor. One great

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cause of the cruelty and neglect charged against hospital nurses is, that they become insensibly and gradually hardened by perpetual sights and sounds of suffering. "A good nurse ought to receive every new case of affliction as if it were the first; so it has been said: but if we look for this ever fresh fount of sympathy and conscientiousness either from natural kindness of heart, sense of duty, or love. of gain, we shall be disappointed. In a small hospital for wretched, helpless, bedridden paupers, one of the religious women acknowledged to me that their duties were of a nature so painful and revolting, and in their issue, which could end only in death, so depressing, that still, after being for years accustomed to the work, they were obliged every morning to dedicate themselves anew to their duty, for the love of God." It is because they were accustomed to the work, that such a renewed and especial consecration to it in heart and soul was daily necessary: nothing hardens like custom.

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"You ought to understand," said Mr. Maurice, "that the study of disease for the purpose of science has no tendency to harden the heart." True; but to minister to disease with no ulterior purpose but self-interest, though it be of an elevated and enlightened kind, does and must harden the heart in the long run.

It is one cause of that languor, and despondency, and impatience, which sometimes comes over zealous and kindhearted women who devote themselves to the sick, and miserable, and perverted, and ignorant poor, that they begin with a conviction that they shall find their reward in a certain palpable result of their labour; that after a time they shall be able to count their successes on their fingers. Those who set about fulfilling the teaching of Christ on such terms are only a degree better than those who work for hire of another kind. In what is heart-warm charity better than ambition or love of glory if it be not in thisthat those who do God's work must devote themselves to it daily in a stronger faith and in a loftier hope, in the faith that no atom of such work shall be lost or pass away?

One purpose of an hospital supposes the presence of the feminine nature to minister through love as well as the masculine intellect to rule through power,-the presence of those who can soothe and comfort as well as those who

can heal. Now I will speak of what I have seen where this combined régime prevails.

The Paris hospitals are so admirably organised by the religious women, who in almost every instance share in the administration so far as regards the care of the sick, that I have often been surprised that hitherto the numbers of our medical men who have studied at Paris have not made any attempts to introduce a better system of female nursing into the hospitals at home. But they appear to have regarded everything of the kind with despair or indifference.

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In my former Lecture I mentioned several of the most famous of these hospitals: during my last visit to Paris I visited an hospital which I had not before seen the hospital Lariboissière, which appeared to me a model of all that a civil hospital ought to be, clean, airy, light, and lofty, above all, cheerful. I should observe that generally in the 'hospitals served by Sisters of Charity, there is ever an air of cheerfulness caused by their own sweetness of temper and voluntary devotion to their work. At the time that I visited this hospital it contained 612 patients, 300 men and 312 women, in two ranges of building divided by a very pretty garden. The whole interior management is entrusted to twenty-five trained Sisters of the same Order as those who serve the Hôtel-Dieu. There are besides about forty servants, men and women,—men to do the rough work, and male nurses to assist in the men's wards under the superintendence of the Sisters. There are three physicians and two surgeons in constant attendance, a steward or comptroller of accounts, and other officers. To complete this picture, I must add that the hospital Lariboissière was founded by a lady, a rich heiress, a married woman too, whose husband, after her death, carried out her intentions to the utmost with zeal and fidelity. She had the assistance of the best architects in France to plan her building: medical and scientific men had aided her with their counsels. What the feminine instinct of compassion had conceived was by the manly intellect planned and ordered, and again by female aid administered. In all its arrangements this hospital appeared to me a perfect example of the combined working of men and women."

*

*The superiority of small hospitals over large ones in regard to all the moral conditions of management and the health of the patients was

In contrast with this splendid foundation, I will mention another not less admirable in its way.

When I was at Vienna, I saw a small hospital belonging to the Sisters of Charity there. The beginning had been very modest, two of the Sisters having settled in a small old house. Several of the adjoining buildings were added one after the other, connected by wooden corridors: the only new part which had any appearance of being adapted to its purpose was the infirmary, in which were fifty-two patients, twenty-six men and twenty-six women, besides nine beds for cholera. There were fifty Sisters, of whom one-half were employed in the house, and the other half were going their rounds amongst the poor, or nursing the sick in private houses. There was a nursery for infants, whose mothers were at work; a day-school for one hundred and fifty girls, in which only knitting and sewing were taught; all clean, orderly, and, above all, cheerful. There was a dispensary, where two of the Sisters were employed in making up prescriptions, homoeopathic and allopathic. There was a large airy kitchen where three of the Sisters with two assistants were cooking. There were two priests and two physicians. So that, in fact, under this roof we had the elements on a small scale of an English workhouse; but very different was the spirit which animated it.

I saw at Vienna another excellent hospital for women alone, of which the whole administration and support rested with the ladies of the Order of St. Elizabeth. These are cloistered, that is, not allowed to go out of their home to nurse the sick and poor; nor have they any schools; but all sick women who apply for admission are taken in without any questions asked, so long as there is room for themcases of child-birth excepted. At the time I visited this hospital it contained ninety-two patients: about twenty

pointed out to me by a distinguished Italian physician; but he thought they would involve more material difficulties, more trouble to the officials, more expense to the public, and be less convenient and available as schools for young surgeons and physicians. In this view Miss Nightingale seems to agree.

In the "Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science for 1858," there is a paper by Florence Nightingale "On the Sanitary Condition of Hospitals," in which the admirable construction of the Lariboissière Hospital is pointed out and a plan given.

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