Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/379

363 The Past and Future 363 entific spirit and point of view. This should not be, however, at the expense of the more human and personal interest which the nurse has always had in the sick patient as an individual. The physician's intense interest in the scientific aspects of the "case" often makes him somewhat blind to the immediate comfort and welfare of the patient, and it is all the more important that the nurse should be keenly alive to these human and social needs, and should keep them constantly in the foreground. There is of course no degradation in the name of servant, and no disgrace in doing the simplest or the most ordinary forms of manual Influence of work. Indeed it has been one of our the " ser- proudest traditions that nurses have '■a°t-ii"*'se " period raised so much of what used to be called "menial" work to the rank of a science and art, and that they have never scorned even the hardest and most disagreeable task, when it has been found to be necessary to the safety and comfort of their patients. The thing which degrades is the servile spirit, which robs one of dignity and independence and which saps one's honour and self-respect. We often congratulate ourselves that the bad old sys- tem of the servant-nurse has so largely disappeared