Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/127

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS would be a useful and beneficent work; the lady is delighted with the idea.

I have naturally told her much about you. She will become with pleasure a member of the Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming. She has two little daughters in Holland; one wishes to become an advocate, and the other too will study a profession.

I told her that it was my earnest wish before I started out in life in whatever capacity, to spend first at least half a year at work in a hospital to learn something of the care of the sick because now if sickness should fall under my hands, I should not know which way to turn. She said at once that her brother-in-law who is a doctor, would help to initiate me into the secrets of sick nursing. The doctor is a newcomer, speaks no Javanese and very broken Malay. I can be of service to him in turn by acting as interpreter, for a large majority of his patients are either natives or Chinese.

I am thinking seriously of this plan of spending some time in a hospital, it would add a great deal to my education; I have sat and pondered over it long. What do you think of it? Oh it is misery on top of misery to see some one suffer frightful pain, and not to know how to alleviate that pain. Those who watch suffer even more than the patient himself. I have sat by many sick beds, even as a child, and speak from experience. The idea of studying nursing came to me at the bed-side of a dear one.

Later I shall speak out and say frankly what I have in my heart in regard to the education of girls. I shall plead for the importance of a knowledge of hygiene and of the structure of the human body to women.

I want to see hygiene and physiology placed on the curriculum of the school, which is to be erected. Poor bunglers, eh? who after so much —105—