true doctrines of health, would be a great
national work.

For there the material exists, and will be used for nursing, whether the
real "conclusion of the matter" be to nurse or to poison the sick. A
man, who stands perhaps at the head of our medical profession, once said
to me, I send a nurse into a private family to nurse the sick, but I
know that it is only to do them harm.

Now a nurse means any person in charge of the personal health of
another. And, in the preceding notes, the term _nurse_ is used
indiscriminately for amateur and professional nurses. For, besides
nurses of the sick and nurses of children, the numbers of whom are here
given, there are friends or relations who take temporary charge of a
sick person, there are mothers of families. It appears as if these
unprofessional nurses were just as much in want of knowledge of the laws
of health as professional ones.

Then there are the school-mistresses of all national and other schools
throughout the kingdom. How many of children's epidemics originate in
these! Then the proportion of girls in these schools, who become mothers
or members among the 64,600 nurses recorded above, or schoolmistresses
in their turn. If the laws of health, as far as regards fresh air,
cleanliness, light, &c., were taught to these, would this not prevent
some children being killed, some evil being perpetuated? On women we
must depend, first and last, for personal and household hygiene--for
preventing the race from degenerating in as far as these things are
concerned. Would not the true way of infusing the art of preserving its
own health into the human race be to teach the female part of it in
schools and hospitals, both by practical teaching and by simple
experiments, in as far as these illustrate what may be called the theory
of it?

FOOTNOTES

[1]

[Sidenote: Curious deductions from an excessive death rate.]

Upon this fact the most wonderful deductions have been strung. For a
long time an announcement something like the following has been going
the round of the papers:--"More than 25,000 children die every year in
London under 10 years of age; therefore we want a Children's Hospital."
This spring there was a prospectus issued, and divers other means taken
to this effect:--"There is a great want of sanitary knowledge in women;
therefore we want a Women's Hospital." Now, both the above facts are too
sadly true. But what is the deduction? The causes of the enormous c