The nurse.

Date:
[1849 or 1850?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nurse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    space on the Sabbath, and occupy themselves at home in the study of the Bible, and in suppli- cation and thanksgiving. The good nurse knows, that without a quiet state of mind, the work of the physician or herself is of very little avail. She has nothing to do with disputed points of doctrine, but a great deal with the indisputable duties of Christianity. She will promote to the utmost of her power reconciliation of estranged friends and relatives, the abandonment of vicious society and vicious habits, to which so many patients owe their state of disease and distress. She will not fail to remind the young and heed- less inmates of the house of many little acts of kind attention, that will smooth the temper of the invalid. Whatever her own religious opinions may be, and how different soever from those of her patient, she may do this with credit to herself, and with great propriety; but she will not try to make converts, to cry up this or that preacher, or church, or meeting- house ; still less business can she have with the worldly affairs of those under her charge. She will not even be witness to a will, nor be one of a party in any domestic cabal; planning favour to one branch of the family, and disin- heriting another; yet she will, at the same time, intimate that life is short at best, and re- covery from disease always doubtful; that no man is more likely to die for making a just will, but, on the contrary, is more likely to re- cover, when he can turn his mind from this LI