The nurse of the future will not be merely a handmaiden to care for the
sick body by deftly carrying out the doctor's orders. She will do this
almost automatically as a matter of course, and skilfully; but it will
be the merest beginning of her mission. That mission itself will be to
eliminate the causes of disease; to teach the ways of health, to
supervise the sanitary conditions of city, town, and country. Practical
ways and the wise means to this end will be taught in her hospital,
which will become a community center with clinics, teaching through its
doctors and nurses the way to health, instead of merely treating and
advising the cases as they come. But the greatest contribution of the
nurse of the future will be a wide-spread _desire for health_ and _will
to health_, rather than a desire and will to avoid discomfort and pain
and danger of death. This _will to health_ will doom in the sane mind
the disease-accepting attitude. It will do all that common sense and
applied medical science can do to strengthen the body; then it will take
what life brings in the way of unavoidable disease and weakness and
inability, with an uncringing mind. It will hold the mind's attitude to
serenity and poise and accomplishment within the necessary limits of its
disordered body. It will be master of its dwelling and make the most of
the little the body can give, and force all bearable weakness and pain
to be stepping-stones to endurance and will-strength and cheer. It will
not accept physical limitations as final things. If life must be lived
in a prison-house it will be its own jailer, and fill the rooms with
flowers, music, friends, and happiness.
No nurse is competent to help her patient to overcome any curable
physical weakness, and keep the mind serene in the face of the
incurable, until she herself has learned that the will to health is
capable of transforming disease of body, from disaster, into health of
mind and soul.
The nurse of the future will know the laws of mind as she knows the
course of disease; she will be dedicated to such wise care of existing
disease as will lead to prevention of future disease; and she will be a
sworn, trained ally of the health-accepting mind.
INDEX
Absent-mindedness, 64
Absolutes, 54
Abstract concept, 52
object concepts, 53
quality concepts, 53
Accuracy of perception, 141
Action cannot be separated from feeling, 68
Acts, compulsive, 106
Adaptability, 79
necessity of, 80
Amnesia, 103
Anesthesia, 101
Aphasia, 103
Apperception, 54
Association of ideas, 143
Attention, 79
of interest, 112
of reason and will, 118
root of disease or health attitude, 112
Autosuggestion, 84
Awareness, 15
Bad habits, 91
Beginning of reason, 69
Body and mind, relation of, 40
Borderland disorders, 107
Brain, 33
hind, 43
Censor, 31
Central and peripheral nervous systems in action, 35
Cerebellum, 43
Cerebrum, 43
functions of, 45
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