Lectures on Medical Nursing.
Inscribed To A Former Student And Fellow Nurse
[Nightingale, Florence]. Anderson, J. Wallace, M.D. Lectures on Medical Nursing. Delivered in the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow. Second edition. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, … Publishers to the University, 1883.
8vo.; endpapers offset; blue cloth, stamped in blind and gilt; extremities gently frayed. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Second edition of this compilation of Anderson’s course of lectures on medical nursing, composed for the Managers of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary; the first edition was published in 1882. Lecture topics include the history of nursing; temperature and pulse; cough; digestion and nutrition; disease; fever; bedsores; remedies; and qualifications of a nurse. In an appendix he discusses “invalid cookery,” “peptonised foods,” “poisons and antidotes,” “weights and fluid measures,” and provides a glossary of medical terms.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: Miss Pirrie with Florence Nightingale’s deepest & warmest interest London, October 1885. With marginal pencil lines to two pages. Ella Pirrie, a Nightingale School trained nurse, became the Superintendent and Head Nurse of the Belfast City Hospital in November 1884. Nightingale followed Pirrie’s career with interest, sending her gifts for the young charges in her infirmary at Christmas 1884; this inscribed volume—together with a letter (not present) offering plants and small animals—in October 1885; and a solicitous note and small “subsidy” to Pirrie, then unwell, in April 1890.
Anderson discusses Nightingale and The Nightingale Fund on pages 5-7 (he indexes her as “Nightingale, Miss”), and credits her with establishing the field of medical nursing.
Everyone has read about, or knows something of the sufferings of our soldiers in the Crimea. It was not that more than 3000 mean died from wounds received in action…but that six times that number should have died of other diseases, largely preventable, which as felt to be a national disgrace. And when a lady was found who was able to meet and successfully grapple with the emergency , everyone looked to her, and thought of what she had done, with quite a personal interest. On the 21st October, 1854, Miss Nightingale left England for the Crimea, with a staff of thirty-seven nurses, and within two years she was back again, having won the gratitude and admiration of the whole army. Her name was a household word in every soldier’s home, and soon also in every home in the land. So it was that, in our own country, universal attention came to be directed to the proper care of the sick. (pp. 5-6)
Thirty years after Nightingale came to the rescue of the British army, her influence had spread over national borders, and in many instances she herself tracked the success of her students. In December 1884 Nightingale sent gifts to the infirmary children under Pirrie’s care, and in October 1885 inscribed this book, which she sent with a letter in which she also offered gifts of plants and small animals.
In a précis of David H. Craig’s history of the Belfast City Hospital (Ulster Medical Journal, 1974, v. 43, p. 1), the parallels between Pirrie’s work in Belfast and Nightingale’s in England are clear:
Nursing in our Infirmary was slow to develop. In the early days there were paid nurses; decent, hard-working and courageous women they were, but untrained. They were very thin on the ground. In the year ending 29th September 1867, 3336 patients were treated, comprising 1695 acute contagious medical cases, and 1641 acute and chronic non-contagious medical cases. For this there were 15 paid nurses. Their task was to supervise the unpaid paupers, who lived in the wards and were given hospital diet, and in return for these privileges carried out all the actual nursing duties. These pauper attendants were far from satisfactory.
In November 1884 Miss Ellie [sic] Pirrie was appointed Superintendent and Head Nurse at a sal
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