Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/43

27 Care of Sick in Ancient World 27 their health officers and their public hospitals. There were also hospitals for animals, supported at public expense. Hygienic procedures Health were enforced by making them a part of officers and religious observance, and the early morn- communal hospitals ing devotions of the Hindus were health measures, quaintly described in poetic phrases. In an old medical article an estimate is given of the desirable qualifications of "the Physician, the Drugs, the Nurse, and the Patient." The nurse must know how to compound drugs, must be clever, devoted to the patient, and pure in mind and body. Again, in the description of a model hospital the nurse's qualities are dwelt on in more detail: "Skilled in every kind of service that a patient may require, endowed with general clever- ness, competent to cook food, skilled in bathing or washing the patient, well conversant with rubbing or massaging the limbs, lifting the patient or assisting him to walk about, well skilled in making or cleaning beds, ready, patient, and skil- ful in waiting upon one who is ailing, never unwilling to do anything that may be ordered." In those hospitals of India there were employed, also, professional musicians and story-tellers who cheered and diverted the patients by singing and by reciting poetry to them.