Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/215

 sounded with the stethoscope, silently stole that instrument out of the physician's pocket, where she knew it lived, and tried his legs as he had tried her lungs—listening with a wise countenance to the mysterious revelations it made.

How pretty it was, if sometimes so sad, to see the various attitudes and conditions of the children! One little fellow, convalescent but still weak, was seated in a chair mounted on a table, and looked really pantomimically regal in his small scarlet wrapper; another, enveloped in a blanket, was laid across its mother's lap and arm in the attitude of Henrietta Brown's "Sick Child;" some sat up in their cots, playing with the toys spread out on the bed-shelf before them; others laid down quietly in theirs, not speaking and not moving, only turning their eyes longingly to the fairy tree which was to gladden and relieve their weary sufferings.

Some of the cases were very interesting, and I may as well state them now before I go on to the tree. A child was brought in, dying from croup. When at the last gasp they cut into the windpipe, inserted a silver tube for the child to breathe through, and so saved its life. I saw the scar; which will remain; but the little one itself was fat and lively, and apparently in perfect health. This too was "the bronchitis" when I asked the mother, and the scar was "for a lump in her throat." One child, whom I saw running about like a miniature lamplighter, had been paralysed a few months ago; another had been cured of an awful outburst of scrofula; but, perhaps, the most striking of all the cases, were those of three children who had been brought in, dying of atrophy. As they were unable to be fed naturally, owing to uncontrollable sickness, the physician ordered beef-tea poultices to be wrapped round the loins and spine, which at once revived them; and then began the long labour of building up what exposure and privation had nearly destroyed. For between two and three weeks they were fed with raw meat, torn by the nurses into the finest possible filaments, and reduced to a pulp—very small quantities of which they gave continually, thus nourishing the little ones by slow degrees until they were able to be fed in a more ordinary manner.

But though science can do much, it cannot do everything; and with all the lives saved and the successful cases to the good of the account, there are others which are hopeless from the beginning. One was there this afternoon—a beautiful little creature, so far as mere features went—with a huge tumour on the top of its head, malignant it is feared, and almost as large as the head itself. As yet, the tumour has not touched the brain, and the child is quite natural and intelligent; but the sadder phase has to come, and not even the administration of the Pantia Ralli ward can do more than alleviate the suffering that must be, and gladden the poor little life, so far as it may be gladdened, for its brief remaining term.

Nothing impressed me more than the extreme kindness of the young men towards the children. They were like big elder brothers among the little ones, and very unlike the conventional medical student of comic literature. Perhaps the adoption of Sister nurses has had something to do with the improvement, for there are no paid upper nurses in the hospital, which is served by the Sisters of St. John's House. King's College Hospital was the first to adopt Sisters as the head nurses; and the result has been most satisfactory. More intelligent and more conscientious than the paid class, they manage the patients and children better, carry out the orders of the doctor more faithfully, and aid him more effectually by the accuracy of their own observations. The name of hospital nurse, once synonymous with brutality and callous ignorance, is now a guarantee for the best kind of sick tending; and who shall say where the refining influence of that reform ends? Besides, this self-devotion gives educated women a work to do that is as valuable for themselves as for those for whom it is done. It gives the lonely, duties; the unemployed, occupation; the solitary, interests and objects for love and pity. There is no sickly sentimentalism of any kind about them, no fantastic excess, no advanced ritualism, or revivalism, or any other one-sided manifestation of enthusiasm; all is done in a quiet self-controlled purposeful manner; and the work to be done, not themselves in their mode of doing it, is the main object which each has before her, and each tries to carry out to perfection.

As I entered the ward, the Sisters were decorating the tree, the young assistants helping; and one or two sturdy little fellows were made happy by being allowed to hand up the toys that were to be hung. Everything was done so deftly, so neatly, with such good management; no one got into any other's way; there was no confusion, no irritation, no contradictory orders, or opposing wills; everything was so peaceful and so happy, and the very children,