PREFACE.
The object of the author in writing this volume is to offer to nurses, and especially to those women who desire to make “monthly nursing” a vocation, the instruction which they need for that purpose, sufficiently illustrated and at a moderate price.
The book is written under a firm conviction in the mind of the author that a work of this character is needed at the present time—a work that combines some information to the monthly nurse in regard to her peculiar duties with considerable instruction in midwifery. He has many times heard inquiries made for a book of this kind and has not been able to point to one of the character desired. He has learned during the forty-five years that he has practiced medicine in a small city and its vicinity, that mother and nurse are often combined in the same person. The important duty of nursing the sick is so generally performed by mothers, that they also, as a class, require some scientific knowledge to be acquired by means of plain, practical instruction. And, in fact, throughout our country, every mother is liable, in an emergency, to be called upon to fill the office of an accoucheur.
For the professional nurse, such technical and accurate knowledge should be considered indispensable. The training schools for nurses in some of our largest cities are doing a noble work, and are elevating the standard of requirements for those who seek this field of true womanly labor. But comparatively few of the many thousands who follow this vocation are able to attend such schools; yet they are willing and desirous to learn. Women seem instinctively to desire such knowledge. A proper effort to place within their reach the means of obtaining the necessary technical knowledge for their work, and especially for the work of the nurse who attends upon the mother in childbirth, will not, the author trusts, be deemed presumptuous. There are many excellent nurses, who have become so without the aid of training school or such a book as this, but it is hoped that this volume may make the acquirement of the necessary knowledge more easy and furnish ready information of value to those nurses who are most thoroughly perfected in their work. Physicians, they will find, stand ready to aid them. The attending physician, as a rule, may be depended upon to give such help as may be necessary to the understanding of the instructions here presented, and through their cooperation the number of earnest students in this department of womanly labor may be multiplied.
The author, during the preparation of it, consulted many writers upon obstetrics, medicine and nursing; and it is only because it would not be compatible with the size of this volume, that he has not made frequent references to these excellent works. But all that he has written has been founded on his own knowledge, experience, and observation, while it coincides with the expressed opinions of others who may be considered good authority. In only two or three things has the author ventured to advance beyond others.