Care of the Sick : Part 3

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 29 of 43)

Food for the sick should be cooked on coals, that no smoke may have access to it; and great care must be taken to prevent, by stirring, any adherence to the bottom of the cooking vessel, as this always gives a disagreeable taste.

Keeping clean handkerchiefs and towels at hand, cooling the pillows, sponging the hands with water, (with care to dry them thoroughly,) swabbing the mouth with a clean linen rag on the end of a stick, are modes of increasing the comfort of the sick. Always throw a shawl over a sick person when raised up.

Be careful to understand a physician's directions and to obey them implicitly. If it be supposed that any other person knows better about the case than the physician, dismiss the physician and employ that person in his stead.

It is always best to consult the physician as to where medicines should be purchased and to show the articles to him before using them, as great impositions are practiced in selling old, useless and adulterated drugs. Always put labels on vials of medicine and keep them out of the reach of children.

Be careful to label all powders and particularly all white powders, as many poisonous medicines in this form are easily mistaken for others which are harmless.

In nursing the sick, always spoke gently and cheeringly; and, while you express sympathy for their pain and trials, stimulate them to bear sill with fortitude and with resignation to the Heavenly Father who "doth not willingly afflict," and "who caused all things to work together for good to them that love him." Offer to read the Bible or other devotional books, whenever it is suitable and will not be deemed obtrusive.

Miss Ann Preston, one of the most refined as well as talented and learned female physicians, in a published article, gives valuable instruction as to the training, of nurses. She claims that every woman should be trained for this office and that some who have special traits that fit them for it should make it their daily professional business. She remarks that the indispensable qualities in a good nurse are common sense, conscientiousness and sympathetic benevolence: and therefore continues:

"God himself made and commissioned one set of nurses; and in doing this and adapting them to utter helplessness and weakness, what did he do? He made them to love the dependence and to see something to admire in the very perversities of their charge. He made them to humor the caprices and regard both reasonable and unreasonable complaining. He made them to bend tenderly over the disturbed and irritated and fold them to quiet assurance in arms made soft with love; in a word, he made mothers! And, other things being equal, whoever has most maternal tenderness and warm sympathy with the sufferer is the best nurse." And it is those most nearly endowed by nature with these traits who should be selected to be trained for the sacred office of nurse to the sick, while, in all the moral training of womanhood, this ideal should be the aim.

Again, Miss Preston wisely suggests that "persons may be conscientious and benevolent and possess good judgment in many respects and yet be miserable nurses of the sick for want of training and right knowledge.

"Knowledge, the assurance that one knows what to do, always gives presence of mind - and presence of mind is important not only in a sick-room but in every home. Who has not known consternation in a family when some one has fainted, or been burned, or cut, while none were present who knew how to stop the flowing blood, or revive the fainting, or apply the saving application to the burn? And yet knowledge and efficiency in such cases would save many a life and be a most fitting and desirable accomplishment in every woman."

"We are slow to learn the mighty influence of common agencies and the greatness of little things, in their bearing upon life and health. The woman who believes it takes no strength to bear a little noise or some disagreeable announcements and loses patience with the weak, nervous invalid who is agonized with creaking doors or shoes, or loud, shrill voices, or rustling papers, or sharp, fidgety motions, or the whispering so common in sick-rooms and often so acutely distressing to the sufferer, will soon correct such misapprehensions by herself experiencing a nervous fever."

Here the writer would put in a plea for the increasing multitudes of nervous sufferers not confined to a sick-room and yet exposed to all the varied sources of pain incident to an exhausted nervous system, which often cause more intolerable and also more wearing pain than other kinds of suffering.

"An exceeding acuteness of the senses is the result of many forms of nervous disease. A heavy breath, an unwashed hand, a noise that would not have been noticed in health, a crooked table-cover or bed-spread may disturb or oppress; and more than one invalid has spoken in my hearing of the sickening effect produced by the nurse tasting her food, or blowing in her drinks to make them cool. One woman and a sensible woman too, told me her nurse had turned a large cushion upon her bureau with the back part in front. She determined not to be disturbed nor to spoke of such a trifle, but after struggling three hours in vain to banish the annoyance, she was forced to ask to have the cushion placed right."

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.