Page:Nurses for the sick.djvu/20

16 that workhouse nurses are, as a rule, either old and infirm or else able-bodied and vicious, and both equally ignorant and untrained, we think we need add no more to prove their worse than inefficiency, and the absolute necessity that there is for a change in our system if we would correct a crying and national disgrace.

We have seen the great need there is of earnest efforts in this cause, and have noticed some of the endeavours that have been made to meet it at home. But we are yet far behind all other European countries in these efforts, not only Roman Catholic but Protestant. The organizations of the communities of the Romish church for the purpose of supplying nurses for the sick number their members by thousands, while Protestant France and Germany have for twenty or thirty years endeavoured to provide for this great social want by instituting orders of women whom they have called deaconesses, after the custom of the early Christian church, to minister to the necessities of their suffering fellow-creatures. It only remains for us to ask the question why we have not followed their example, or rather, why we should not do so without further delay? We are well aware that