It is inconceivable that there should not be a crowd of applications when the plan is once known and understood, for in no profession or occupation is there such a scarcity of hands, or therefore so clear a prospect of constant employment.
The candidate has simply to apply to the matron—Mrs. Wardroper—at St. Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark; and, if in person, between eleven and twelve in the forenoon. Mrs. Wardroper will supply her with a slip of paper—a form to be filled up with replies to eight inquiries:
Name of applicant.
Age.
Place of birth.
Where educated.
Previous occupation.
Whether single, married, or widow. (If married, the certificate must be produced.)
If married, or a widow, whether with children; and, if so, with how many.
References.
This is all very plain and easy; and here we see the beginning of a new period, in which the traditionary “old nurse” will die out, and the sick of our country will have less suffering in illness, and a better chance of recovery than ever before; and in which the most womanly of professional occupations will have been, for the first time, effectually thrown open to all who are worthy to enter it.
It is to be hoped that while the Committee are providing tendance for every disease and every terrible accident which is admitted into a hospital, or is found in any private house, they will not overlook the brain-sick, who are the severest sufferers of all. In the words of one who has known that suffering, and the misery of bad attendance under it, “There is far more need to train attendants for the insane than for the sick. The sick can tell if they are ill-treated, and will be believed; but the poor sick in mind may be neglected and ill-used to an extent that the world knows little of, and find no remedy.”
The Lunacy Commissioners, and all the benevolent men in the profession cannot secure justice to the insane, while the race of attendants is what it has always been, and is now. There is actually no existing remedy for the enormous evil of subjecting persons of education and refinement to the management and control of ignorant attendants, coarse in language and manners. Go where we will,—among asylums, physicians, matrons, and patients,—we hear the complaint of the difficulty of obtaining any attendants who can be trusted or tolerated at all, in their demeanour towards the patients. They are not all tyrannical,—not all unkind; but in ignorant minds there is a radically wrong notion of their relation to the brain-sick. Few can conceive that the feelings, and most of the thoughts of the insane, generally speaking, remain very much what they were before the disease set in, and very like other people’s; and that therefore they should be treated, as far as possible, with the same consideration shown to other persons, and formerly due to themselves. Few of the ignorant class of “keepers” have any conception of topical brain disease and partial insanity, except as a curious phenomenon. With them a crazy person is crazy, and must be managed rather than ministered to; and the misery thus caused to sensitive and self-respecting persons is dreadful to think of. The coarse and hard tyranny once prevalent in lunatic asylums has given way, to a considerable extent, under the happy influences of advancing knowledge and improved social conscientiousness; but there is a kind of infliction on the brain-sick which no supervision can obviate, and no vigilance check, while the true remedy of good nursing and fitting attendance is out of reach.
There is no natural or insurmountable reason for its being out of reach. There are humane and enlightened women, full of good sense as well as kind feeling, who would be willing and even eager to nurse and guard the insane, if they knew how to set about it without encountering unknown evils, and committing themselves to the society of persons whom they dread and dislike far more than the patients. It is all a chance whether a woman of this quality can get any training first, or enter on the occupation afterwards, without running risks which amount to an effectual discouragement. It would be a great blessing if the Committee of the Nightingale Fund could open a way to such women, and bring them face to face with the patients who are suffering so keenly, and often so fatally, for want of them.
It could hardly be difficult to do. The teaching and training is small in comparison with that required for hospital-nursing. In fact, it is an opening which is needed; an access to the patients, and a trial of the mode of life. No doubt there is something to be learned in preparation for so peculiar an office. The usual hospital methods of securing good general conditions of air, warmth, food, cleanliness, &c., are as necessary in lunatic asylums as in all other abodes where the recovery of health is the object; but, beyond these general methods, there is not much that can be taught to attendants on the insane. The art necessary for them is that of exerting their own faculties, intellectual and moral, for the benefit of their charge. They have constantly to exercise good sense, readiness of mind, good humour, and never-failing patience. These things cannot be taught: but they may be incited and encouraged by wise authorities in the presence of the duty to be done. This would soon appear if the Nightingale Fund Committee would make arrangements with the authorities of Bethlehem Hospital or St. Luke’s, or some other well-managed asylum, by which probationers might be trained for the office of attending on the brain-sick. The increasing proportion of cures among the insane which has rewarded such improvements as we have been able to make in the management of that class of patients, would be rapidly and enormously extended, if we could get rid of the one terrible impediment complained of by all parties,—the bad quality of the attendance. As far as appears, the object is one which fairly comes within the scope of the Nightingale Fund. If the Committee should think so, and should act accordingly, there would be rejoicing, not only in