The training institutions for nurses, and the workhouses : an attempt to solve one of the social problems of the present day / by Edward Sieveking.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The training institutions for nurses, and the workhouses : an attempt to solve one of the social problems of the present day / by Edward Sieveking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    poverty. The present inefficiency of the workhouse nurses is the very least objection, it only renders the argument of the necessity of actual intercourse and tuition, the more forcible. Their education and sub- sequent employment would not interfere with the interests of other existing classes, and even assuming all inmates of the workhouses, which is not the case, to belong to the most ignorant orders, we should, by our endeavours but render them more able than they at present are, to perform duties, which they are already permitted to fulfil. The local acquaintances of the paupers, their previous sad experience, and their knowledge of the real wants of the poor, would give them cceteris paribus, many advantages over the nurses sent from a distance ; and if the visiting system, and a proper system of control be fully established, we should acquire a close chain, linking- all the elements of society, and tending not only to the promotion of reciprocal kindliness of feeling, but to a material economy of time, labour, and money. It would lead us too far if we were to enter fully into the subject of the waste of these valuable com- modities by society as at present constituted, but we have little hesitation in saying, that there are few charities which would not be gainers in point of all three, by an efficienl combination of Poor-law relief with the proposed system of visiting and instruction. We will not weary our readers with further gene- ralities, but reduce our arguments, and the proposi- b