Page:Nurses for the sick.djvu/13



Report of the Registrar-General tells us the number of persons who die annually in England. From three diseases (generally considered to be incurable) there are eighty thousand deaths. But we do not learn from this complete and accurate source of information how many sick persons there are at any one given time throughout the households and institutions of England. We are not told, but we know that those must be numbered by thousands who are suffering in various degrees from every kind of illness to which our human nature is liable. And for every individual of these thousands there must be some kind of nursing provided, whether they are sick persons in institutions or in their own homes. Statistics inform us that the number of nurses so provided is no less than twenty-five thousand four hundred and sixty-six. We have no means of ascertaining how far this number is adequate to the demand. Have we any means of knowing how far those who do