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Rural Health
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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Rural Health N ightingale’s interest in the special problems of rural health stemmed from her own rural roots in Derbyshire, the Hampshire home and later stays at Claydon House. From Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes it should be clear that the sanitary conditions in which cottagers typically lived were poor. There was no health education (indeed no state school system at all when Nightingale ’s work began) and the conventional wisdom about washing and personal and home cleanliness was terribly wrong. There is a cryptic remark in a letter to Pastor Fliedner in 1861 about opening another school (after the training school at St Thomas’ Hospital ) to ‘‘raise’’ women sent from the country by their pastors, and who must return there, like village deaconesses. Mary Jones, who was then running the maternity work at King’s College Hospital, would be the superintendent.1 Nothing came of this and Nightingale was only sporadically involved in the issue until late in life. Isolated letters in 1872 and 1881 mention ‘‘health missioners’’ or ‘‘sanitary nurses’’ (the first three items). Concerted work began only in 1891 with the project of ‘‘health at home’’ lectures. Nightingale’s collaborators were the medical officer of health for Buckinghamshire, Dr De’Ath, and Frederick, Maude and Margaret Verney. Concerning issues of training and supervision of the ‘‘health missioners’’ and description of their role, Nightingale urged friendship, sympathy and practical example over lectures. This work culminated in the paper, ‘‘Rural Hygiene,’’ which Maude Verney read at the Conference of Women Workers, Leeds, 1894. It takes up many of the points of Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes and is one of the last papers Nightingale wrote. There are explicit references to the 1 Letter to Theodore Fliedner 10 January 1861, Kaiserswerth Diakoniewerk Rep II K b 3. 580 / chapter ‘‘Minding Baby,’’ and the need to make information acceptable to women of the (rural) ‘‘labouring class.’’ Source: From a letter to Dr Farr, Wellcome Ms 5474/120 13 July 1872 Miss Heaton. Sanitary Education. I should always be glad to see your handwriting and do anything, if I could, at your bidding, were I ten times as busy and twice as ill as I am. I have a very great respect for Miss Heaton’s work, and you know whether I am not almost inclined to attach too much importance rather than too little to any proposal for practically teaching sanitary things, a matter of life and death, to millions. Will you allow me to give such poor advice as I can (in obedience to Miss Heaton’s request) through you? And then you will forward what part, if any, is worth transmitting to her. As Miss Heaton so justly says, the main difficulty lies in the training of sanitary teachers. There is a wide gap between distributing sanitary tracts and talking to mothers’ meetings, and a proposal to duplicate the teaching staff of England for sanitary purposes at the public cost. Is it not a great objection to any scheme, the making sanitary teaching a specialty? Should it not be carried on by existing school agencies? It is a branch of education and, as such, has been extremely well taught in certain schools. Will not a great deal of time be in all probability lost in discussing this question of missionaries and getting their pay eventually refused by Mr Lowe?2 The principle is beyond doubt what we all of us most desire to see thoroughly established. Should you not ‘‘go for’’ its introduction in (government) training schools for teachers, so that the teachers , men and women, may be able to apply the principles in their lessons? There are several treatises for the use of schools, but as to these your advice will be better than mine. As to mothers’ meeting, which now, thank God, exist all over England in thousands, they are admirable places for giving instruction. And to do this the ladies themselves who hold them must observe, read up and think, gaining actual practical information, by going themselves into artisans’ and labourers’ dwellings, so as to apply their own superior considering powers to the actual experience which the poor dwellers themselves alone can have. It is a matter of civilization, as you would say, in which the educated should teach the (comparatively) uneducated. 2 Robert Lowe (1811-92), then chancellor of the Exchequer. Rural Health / 581 [3.239.59.193] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 12:24 GMT) Is there any place...