THE SLUM NURSE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLI, Issue 1, 10 July 1914, Page 1

THE SLUM NURSE.

NEW USE FOJi. OLD HOTTLKS. How a slum tenement-room, with its old stout bottltvs, broken erockerv, tatto red mattress and a rirlsettv table ai.d chair, can be concerted by 'the district nurse into a nraetiea! o'l'erating theatre for an emergency ca.,c is one of tinof the .seventh ,anm*:il nursing Conference which owned v<- - terday at the Horticultural Hall. Westminster (states 'The Dailv Mitil' on April 28). Matrons from ho-nitals all over the kingdom (yesterday was matrons' days) cro-.vded into the upper hall where, the emergency operation room, organised by the 'AViMiig Times ' 13 staged. >" _ A green curtain partitions off the sick-room, a chaos of lielole.-.i disorder before the district nursc'.s arrival, from the useful makeshift llieatre her methodical skill c;in devise front tbo same material. The old round table with a stool v.id some pillows make the operating table. Old crockery is pressed into .service for swab basins. Marmalade jars, carefully boiled out, hold the sterilised water. The stout bottles mak ( » excellent, hot--water bottles. An old box supplies the anaesthetist with his table. A vest torn apart and sown up ng;iin supplies the patient's binder. The neighbors are preyed into service to supply kettles of boiling water, and the one iron kettle belonging to the household is used for sterilising instruments. "This isn't just a fancy picture, young man," an experienced old district nurse told me. "In our work we have to use what material comes to hand." Scores cf nurses took careful note of the "emergency operating room." The conference' lasts all the week and at least 10,000 nurses are expected to visit it.