Volume 1

Report of the City of Glasgow Fever Hospital.

  • Ruchill Fever Hospital (Glasgow, Scotland)
Date:
[1866?]-[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the City of Glasgow Fever Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    while it is merely in selected cases, and at certain stages, that the medical man ought to see his patients frequently.' Even in those he is helpless unless aided by a nurse, and powerless readily to detect carelessness, as he would in ordi- nary diseases when the patient is sensible and can report delinquencies. Therefore, while nursing in all its branches demands attention, fever-nursing I hold to be the most important of all. Through a variety of causes, especially from the dangerous nature of the duties, it tends to fall into the hands of the worthless or incapable. In place of such, we require the worthy and the intelligent. I very much desire the Board of Police and general public to understand clearly why a fever nurse should not only be a good nurse, but if possible the best of nurses. Her patients suffer from a disease which cannot be checked—which passes deliberately through its stages—which creates wants, while it deprives of the power of supplying them, and ultimately destroys the sense of their existence, just when the real need is at the greatest—which so stupefies the faculties that neglect is not observed, and ill-treatment is forgotten. A nurse in a fever ward, as a rule, can never be at rest, whether her watch be by day or by night. Indeed, when a ward is rapidly filled, so that all the beds contain patients in the heat of the fever, one nurse is quite insufficient for 11 patients, as I found once or twice last winter. Food must be given judiciously in small quantities from hour to hour, day and night, without distinction. One patient is stupidly sleepy, and must be roused now and then to take milk or beef-tea, not waiting until he asks it; another is delirious, perhaps violent, and must be soothed, and only as a last resource restrained, which is the first notion of a bad and lazy nurse; another is obsti- nate, or full of notions of poison in his drinks, and must be coaxed, or cheated, or overcome, in any way which will result in getting the nourishment into his stomach. Apart from such peculiar incidents, the majority, even in the ordinary course, are restless—tossing the clothes off, and requiring them to be put kindly on again—crying for drinks, and need-