Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not

Opening of the book

NOTES ON NURSING:
WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.
BY
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
LONDON:
HARRISON, 59, PALL MALL,
BOOKSELLER TO THE QUEEN.
[The right of Translation is reserved.]
PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS,
ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.
PREFACE.
The following notes are by no means intended as a rule of
thought by which nurses can teach themselves to nurse,
still less as a manual to teach nurses to nurse. They are
meant simply to give hints for thought to women who have
personal charge of the health of others. Every woman, or
at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time

or another of her life, charge of the personal health of
somebody, whether child or invalid,—in other words, every
woman is a nurse. Every day sanitary knowledge, or the
knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put the
constitution in such a state as that it will have no
disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a
higher place. It is recognized as the knowledge which
every one ought to have—distinct from medical knowledge,
which only a profession can have.
If, then, every woman must, at some time or other of her
life, become a nurse, i.e., have charge of somebody's
health, how immense and how valuable would be the produce
of her united experience if every woman would think how to
nurse.
I do not pretend to teach her how, I ask her to teach
herself, and for this purpose I venture to give her some
hints.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGES
Ventilation and Warming
8
Health of Houses
14
Petty Management
20
Noise
25
Variety
33
Taking Food
36
What Food?
39
Bed and Bedding
45
Light
47
Cleanliness of Rooms and Walls
49
Personal Cleanliness
52
Chattering Hopes and Advices
54

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