American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
It is always best to consult the physician as to where medicines shall
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 speak 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 causeth 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
thus 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 complainings.
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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