The Nurse's Calling: Practical Hints to Graduate Nurses in the Early 1900's

This book, originally written at the beginning of the last century, is full of advice tips for the Edwardian Nurse. Its dated advice makes very interesting and often hilarious reading,

The author advises:

'A nurse should never grumble about her lot. Nursing is the noblest profession a woman can follow because it is hard, the hardness consists in forgetting self and giving your strength to others. Despite everything, enthusiastically accept the toil as inevitable, and make the higher, nobler aim of nursing so real that the lower consideration of your personal comfort sinks into insignificance. Your nursing should be an exponent of your spiritual state; an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. You bestow the priceless blessing of unwearied, skillful care upon one who should thankfully receive it. If you do not go to your patient with a feeling of thankfulness to God for allowing you to assume such a sacred trust as the care of a human life, you are in no condition to undertake the work.'

Other advice tips for the Edwardian nurse includes:

- Unless you know your male patient very well, do not attempt to read him aloud the stock market levels from a newspaper, for it is well nigh impossible for a woman to read them so that a man will understand her.

- Never go about a sick room with a long face; it is enough for the sick one to have to be sick; you are there to be a help and a comfort, not an added anxiety.

- The servants require pretty careful handling. Above all things, keep on the right side of the cook.

Harriet Camp Lounsbery was president of The West Virginia State Nurse’s Association & the Sanitary School Inspector for Charleston Independent School District in the late 1800's and early 1900s