Notes on Nursing

From the best-known work of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the originator and founder of modern nursing, comes a collection of notes that played an important part in the much-needed revolution in the field of nursing. For the first time it was brought to the attention of those caring for the sick that their responsibilities covered not only the administration of medicines and the application of poultices, but the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet. Miss Nightingale is outspoken on these subjects as well as on other factors that she considers essential to good nursing. But, whatever her topic, her main concern and attention is always on the patient and his needs. One is impressed with the fact that the fundamental needs of the sick as observed by Miss Nightingale are amazingly similar today (even though they are generally taken for granted now) to what they were over 100 years ago when this book was written. For this reason this little volume is as practical as it is interesting and entertaining. It will be an inspiration to the student nurse, refreshing and stimulating to the experienced nurse, and immensely helpful to anyone caring for the sick. - Back cover.

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 as 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. - Preface.