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woman's work in sanitary reform. 221
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
" I Conclude That All Our Endowments For...
earn , and know not where to earn it , might greatly benefit both society and themselves by going * through a course of training which
would qualify them for the office of nurse . They need not think such a position beneath them , for no employment is really
degrading which affords scope for the exercise of the highest faculties of the employed ; and it is quite certain that the efficient discharge
of the duties of a nurse would do this far more than many of the so-called " genteel" occupations now followed hy thousands of
middle-class English women . The heroines of the Crimean war have already ennobled the office of nurse to sick men ; we wait now
for others to do the same for that of nurse to our own sex in the most critical period of physical life .
In all lying-in hospitals , arrangements should be made for the training of intelligent women as nurses ; this has already been done
to a limited extent . The women chosen for this training should be single women of from twenty-five to thirty-five , who would thus
procure suitable and profitable employment , which too many of _theni now seek in vain .
It has been objected that a nurse who is not a mother cannot sufficiently sympathise with the class of sufferings which she is
called to alleviate . Upon this point the writer has received very conflicting opinions from , several highly intelligent motherp .
When a jury of matrons " disagree" on such a point , " who shall decide ? " But even if it were universally believed that single
women are not in some respects quite so well qualified for monthly nurses as mothers are , still , while the present urgently pressing want
of remunerative and suitable _occiipation for singie women exists , and while the battle of life is so hard a one for them , they ought to
be freely allowed to test their capability . Women of the richer classeswho subscribe to lying-in hospitals
, , might very advantageously use their influence with the committees , to urge them to make _arrangements for the training of monthly
nurses ; and mothers generally , would do well to offer every inducement to truly worthy and intelligent women of the middle
classes to serve in this capacity . Now the woman of the middle classes who comes out into the world to earn her own bread , loses
caste and position which she would have maintained had she remained at home in burdensome idleness . While this stateof things
, continues , it will not be easy to raise up a better class of monthly nurses . Comparatively very few women in . the middle classes could
be found willing to write their own writ of social outlawry , by taking the place so long filled by " Mrs . Gamp . " We needevery one of
, us , to be more deeply impressed with the dignity of all useful labor , need to learn to honor our sisters , not in proportion to what society
does for them , but to what they do for society . The next thing to be done by us for the nursery isto raise up a
better class of nursery-maids . It is strange that mothers , so often
confide their little ones—their most precious treasures—to raw ,
Woman's Work In Sanitary Reform. 221
woman s work in sanitary reform . 221
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1859, page 221, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061859/page/5/
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