The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes on Nursing, by Florence Nightingale

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Title: Notes on Nursing
What It Is, and What It Is Not

Author: Florence Nightingale

Release Date: May 26, 2004 [EBook #12439]
[Date last updated: December 21, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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NOTES ON NURSING:

WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

BY
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
72 FIFTH AVENUE
1898.

PREFACE.

The following notes are by no means intended as a rule of thought by
which nurses can teach themselves to nurse, still less as a manual to
teach nurses to nurse. They are meant simply to give hints for thought
to women who have personal charge of the health of others. Every woman,
or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another
of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or
invalid,--in other words, every woman is a nurse. Every day sanitary
knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put
the constitution in such a state as that it will have no disease, or
that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place. It is recognized
as the knowledge which every one ought to have--distinct from medical
knowledge, which only a profession can have.

If, then, every woman must at some time or other of her life, become a
nurse, _i.e._, have charge of somebody's health, how immense and how
valuable would be the produce of her united experience if every woman
would think how to nurse.

I do not pretend to teach her how, I ask her to teach herself, and for
this purpose I venture to give her some hints.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VENTILATION AND WARMING
HEALTH OF HOUSES
PETTY MANAGEMENT
NOISE
VARIETY
TAKING FOOD
WHAT FOOD?
BED AND BEDDING
LIGHT
CLEANLINESS OF ROOMS AND WALLS
PERSONAL CLEANLINESS
CHATTERING HOPES AND ADVICES
OBSERVATION OF THE SICK
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX

NOTES ON NURSING:

WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Disease a reparative process.]

Shall we begin by