EVERY WOMAN NOT A NURSE

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 27

EVERY WOMAN NOT A NURSE

During a wounded man's progress through hospitals and convalescent homes he soon comes to realise that every woman in tho. uniform of a nurse is not necessarily a nurso , —that, in the sense of being a healer, or even a .comforter, His injuries tsays a writer in. the London Daily Mail) seem to awaken some protective instinct, previously dormant,; which telis him that certain persons will not benefit him by their ministrations, and while under their nands liq :is restless and may even suffer much. Training does not make every woman a nurse, any more than it makes every man a soldier. One woman of this type I remember well. She was dainty and pretty —quite the model, j indeed, of the conventional idea of the perfect nurse. But let her be on night duty, | and many a patient suffered discomfort or pain till morning rather than apply to her for relief. When she took the dressing, the trolly bearing the medicaments and appliances well deserved its nickname of " the agony-wagon." Her not unskilful hands had. no soothing power in them. Tho glow of sympathy was absent. She was not careless, but she seemed to think that the chief merit" of a nurse lay in being able to probe calmlj and endure tho unpleasantness of hci patients' wounds, while at the same time expecting them to remain equally indifferent. Remonstrance on the part of a patient was rare, but on one occasion a tough Scot gave . an involuntary squirm and groan. " Why, Jock!" said the nurse; "whore's all your usual fortitude?" "I've got plenty of fortitude, nurso," replied Jock, "but I'm thinkin' it's lift'ytude I wad bo needin' wi' you working at me." But the true-born gentle nurse, possessed of the magical healing touch—who- can de< scribe her ? All the words in the world will not tell us how it is she _is able to quieten the restless, fevered patient by her mere approach. Ho will do anything sho tells him, like an obedient child, and, hoping to pleaso her, will painfully attempt many things he cannot do. Her touch during the ordeal of -dressing seems to possess an aneesthetic quality, which infuses a kind of pleasure into the pain—if those who have not been patients can understand such a thing. She knows the instant of each excruciating twinge, and in some unexplainable way the patient feels it celiciously soothed almost as scon as suffered. _ "That's giving you a lot of pain," said one such woman to a man who was having little jagged pieces of metal picked out 01 his face, as she placed a supporting hand against his head. ■. "ICeep.yovir hand there, nurso, f-nd I'll let you pick tin tacks out of mo all day,' said tie patient.