She ought to be intelligent, able to
interest her patient, to read aloud, and to write letters. The more of
these cases she has seen and nursed, the easier becomes the task of the
doctor. Young, I have said she ought to be, but youthful would be a
better word. If, as she grows older, the nurse loses the strenuous
enthusiasm with which she made her first entrance into her work,
scarcely any amount of conscientious devotion or experience will ever
replace it; but there are fortunate people who seem never to grow old in
this sense. It is always to be borne in mind that most of these patients
are over-sensitive, refined, and educated women, for whom the
clumsiness, or want of neatness, or bad manners, or immodesty of a nurse
may be a sore and steadily-increasing trial. To be more or less isolated
for two months in a room, with one constant attendant, however good, is
hard enough for any one to endure; and certain quite small faults or
defects in a nurse may make her a serious impediment to the treatment,
because no mere technical training will dispense in the nurse any more
than in the physician with those finer natural qualifications which make
their training available.
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