Page:Workhouse nursing.djvu/14

4 be taken to cure them as speedily as possible, so as to preserve them and their families from becoming paupers.

"Thus justice and expediency alike counsel the introduction into the workhouse of the best known system of nursing. Probably nothing which the skill and kindness of medical men can do, no food or physical appliances which the guardians can supply, no oversight or care which they, acting through pauper nurses, can bring to bear, are wanting in the Liverpool workhouse; but it is to be feared that much of this care, liberality, and thought fails of its object for want of a sufficient number of reliable and duly qualified nurses to carry out the instructions given, to administer food and medicine to the patients, to dress their wounds, and so forth."

This appeal was supported by two letters of Miss Nightingale and Sir John McNeill, G.C.B., President of the Board of Supervision (the Scotch Poor Law Board).

Letter from.

115, February 5, 1864.

,

I will not delay another day expressing how much I admire, and how deeply I sympathize with the Workhouse plan.

First let me say that Workhouse sick and Workhouse Infirmaries require quite as much care as (I had almost said more than) Hospital sick. There is an even greater work to be accomplished in Workhouse Infirmaries than in Hospitals.