Hospital pencillings : being a diary while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and others at Nashville, Tennessee, as matron and visitor.

  • Powers, Elvira J.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital pencillings : being a diary while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and others at Nashville, Tennessee, as matron and visitor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    of her real or imagined interference with professional duties, yet there are very many wise and noble surgeons in the ser- vice who rightly appreciate woman's influence in a hospital, and have assisted her in every noble word and work. And a pure, true woman is amply repaid for working her way quietly and kindly against opposite influences, as she may feel assured that her efforts are blessed to the sick boys in her care. She is amply repaid if at the last she may so overcome the preju- dices of a physician as to hear him say what was said to one of the number :— You have been a blessing to the patients and a help to me—have attended to your own duties as nurse without in- terfering with those of mine as physician. And there are those whose lives are due to your care. Some were very low with nervous prostration and nostalgia—another name for home-sickness — and your conversation and attention has aroused, cheered, strengthened and saved them. Or if she may hear from one and another patient, as the same one has when bidding them good-bye for the last time, such words as these :— I shall never come down again as I did here to what I thought was my death-bed, with so little preparation. I'm going to make it a first business of my life to learn how to live, that I may not be afraid to die, and if ever I am a better man it will be due to your influence and your counsels. May God forever bless you ! Or if one might have such a beautiful tribute to the worth of woman's presence among sick soldiers, as our friend Miss Miller, of Chicago, received on board the floating hospital called the Nashville, near Yicksburg. There had been no white woman on the boat previous to her arrival. One after- noon, as she stepped into one of the wards for the first time, her ear caught an exclamation of surprise from the inmate of