Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/381

365 The Past and Future 365 and the way in which they were bulHed and im- posed upon. There can be no excuse for any such betrayal of personal honour or self-respect among women of good breeding and professional spirit, and perhaps if nurses would remember that these things mark one as belonging more or less to the despised "Gamp" class, they would be more eager to clear themselves and other nurses completely from any suspicion of that servile taint. While there is no room for snobbishness in nurs- ing, and while we realize that the nursing impulse is not at all confined to any special grade or class of society, it is very important, in the interests of the sick as well as the interest of nurses themselves, that a certain standard of education and refine- ment should be required in all those who enter the nursing profession, in order that we may not be menaced again by the manners and the morals of any such group of illiterate, underbred, and un- principled women. Though we share some of our traditions with other groups of workers, our conception of the true nurse is not that of a saint or a soldier, nor yet that of a semi-doctor, nor of a <^ooclusion charity worker. We think of her as a socially inspired, scientifically trained expert in her own special art, which is still, we think, the gentlest and