Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/19

 Since when is it that they only give their ink? We now have in England this most extraordinary state of things—England, who is, or thinks herself the most religious and the most commercial country in the world. New hospitals, new asylums, new nurses' homes, and societies for nursing the sick poor at home, are rising everywhere. People are always willing to give their money for these. The Poor-Law Board, the Boards of Guardians, are willing, or compelled, to spend money for separate asylums for work-house sick. An Act was passed last year for the metropolis to this effect. It is proposed to extend it to the whole country. This Act, although miserably inadequate, still inaugurates a new order of things, namely, that the work-house sick shall not be work-house inmates, not be cared for as mere work-house inmates, but that they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who are to be cured, if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country, if they cannot be cured. But are buildings all that are necessary to take care of the sick? There wants the heart and the hand—the trained and skillful hand. Every work-house and other hospital in the kingdom ought to be nursed by such hands and such hearts. Tell me, does not this seem like a truism?

What we meant by challenging England, if she is the most religious and the most