THE NURSING PROFESSION *

BY HON. HUGO HIRSH,

President, Board of Managers, Brooklyn State Hospital.

Nursing is a profession of self-sacrifice and devotion. It is a profession in which the head has not been educated at the expense of the heart. It is a profession of kindness, care and consideration for others. It is a profession which makes love of others paramount to love of self. It is also a profession full of happiness; for the greatest happiness that comes to us is the doing for those who can not do for themselves, helping the helpless, and in doing that lovingly we make not only happiness for ourselves but we make life worth the living for ourselves and others.

The time you have spent in this institution in the service of the State has been and is a test of your character, and this test is: Do you possess courage and enthusiasm for your calling and do you appreciate that it should be sacred to you; sacred because all good work is sacred; sacred because the work in this institution must emphasize to you the grave responsibility that has been given you; responsibility that almost makes you into gods, for it gives you power over life and death? A drop or two too much here or a drop or two not given at all or other things not done may send your patient across the river Styx and none be the wiser, except the doctor, yourself and your conscience. And so it is easy to recognize the fact how sacred your calling must be. There will be many times when it will receive your prayers and I know you will not pray for easy lives but rather to make you stronger men and women. You will pray not for tasks equal to your power but rather for powers equal to your tasks. You will recognize the fact that you are the arms, the eyes, the brain for the time being of the physician or the surgeon, and so you will feel that sacred as the sick room is, so your profession will be in the nature of a religion to you, and for that religion permit me to give you a commandment: Thou shalt be cheerful.

*Address delivered to the graduates of the School of Nursing of the Brooklyn State Hospital. September 29, 1916.

Cheerfulness in the sick room, cheerfulness in this institution is at least half the medicine, if not at times worth all the medicine. The nurse that is not cheerful to her patient has lost the great object of her profession, namely, to help the patient.

In this institution your attention is given to persons whose minds are temporarily or permanently imprisoned. Their lives are blackened by the pall of insanity. Their intelligence is in a cloud, which may never be lifted. They need your cheerfulness, even if their disease does not permit them to understand it. Yet the smile of cheerfulness is sure to do them good and will help you too. To you who may go out of this institution to attend the sick, I say that when after å restless night you find your patient is not in a very good condition and yet with a smile you say to him: "You are doing fine; you are getting well; the physician will see a great change in you" even if you believe that within the hour he may pass away, you will get your reward in the knowledge that the optimism that came with your cheery words and smile will bring a smile to the wan face of the patient and will aid in his recovery.

Of course, there are patients and patients. There are patients who may misunderstand you and your instructions, which brings to my mind the story of a guest at a French inn, who was greatly disturbed one night by a series of incessant jumps and bumpings that appeared to proceed from the room directly overhead. In the morning he complained to the hotel manager and asked to have the mystery cleared up. A little later the manager brought a foreign-looking individual and introduced him to the guest, saying: "This is Baron Von Kotchum Scolinsky, who occupies the room. above you. Perhaps he can tell us what was the noise you

complained of."

Why," said the Baron indignantly, "it was the doctor's instructions. He leafed me a bottle of medicine, which say: 'Take the mixture two nights running, then skip the third night' and so I do it. I haf run the first two nights and last night I skipped."

Remember also in another respect the sacredness of your

profession, whether here in this institution or in outside sick rooms. You will see things, you will hear things that do not belong to you. You hear them and you see them because you are a nurse in a sick room. They belong to that room, except so much as you may learn which should be imparted to the physician or surgeon attending the patient, but all the rest of it, no matter what it may be, you must not impart to a friend, no matter how close he may be to you. Remember what the Talmud says: "Thy friend hath a friend and thy friend's friend hath a friend: be discreet." And remember that it should never be known by anyone what has occurred in the sick room when you were in it. There in the sanctity of that sick room, words are spoken by husband, wife, parent, child, brother, sister or other relative, which were never intended for your ears. all; forget it all.

Forget it

But your

You have entered a profession of ideals. There is no money in your profession. You have not entered it for the purpose of making money. Your success can not be measured by the amount of gain that comes to you. success is typical of the fact that money does not mean success, because, at most, the profession gives you a living, and that you could make in almost any employment wherein intelligence and care and attention are needed, and yet here you have devoted years of your life, study, patience, days and nights without sleeping until you have reached this hour, which is to be the culmination of all that time and effort.

So at this hour I ask you to stand by your ideals. Permit no action or inaction of yours to be a blot upon your conscience, and in that connection and in conclusion let me remind you of the words of Omar Khayyam:

"The moving finger writes, and having writ

Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit

Can lure it back to cancel half a line;

Nor all your tears wipe out a word of it."

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON DIETARY AND

FOOD SUPPLIES

To the State Hospital Commission and the Quarterly Conference:

The Committee on Dietary and Food Supplies appointed by the Commission on June 23, 1916, to make a study of the food supplies of the New York State Hospitals, respectfully reports as follows:

A questionary prepared by the Committee was forwarded to each of the hospitals to be filled out. This questionary covered the population and also each food supply which the institutions issued for the nine months ending June 30, 1916. It was deemed best to consider all the food supplies of the institutions rather than only those for which there is a daily per capita ration allowance.

Two summary sheets accompany this report; the first showing the population, food issue, proteid and caloric values and the second showing the total issue and daily average per capita of the food supplies for which there is a daily ration allowance. From these sheets it will be seen that the daily average number of persons receiving meals at the institutions during the nine months period was 39,295.2; total pounds of food issued 39,398,821; total grams of protein 1,131,108,498.9; total calories 32,528,629,230; average pounds of food issued per person during the nine months 1,002.64; grams of protein per person for the nine months 28,784.92; calories per person for the nine months 827,802.12. The daily average per capita issue of food for the nine months was as follows:

The Rochester State Hospital shows the highest daily average per capita issue of food per person, 4.2305 pounds or 67.688 ounces.

The Willard State Hospital shows the highest daily average per capita grams of protein, 123.57, and also calories, 3,282.18.

The institutions showing the lowest issues are as follows: Central Islip State Hospital

Pounds of food..

Ounces..

Grams of protein...

3 0904

49.446

76.33

The Manhattan State Hospital is the lowest in calories, 2,811.44.

The average issue for all the hospitals of food supplies for which there is a daily per capita ration allowance is as follows:

Meats (including poultry, fish, oysters and

A study of these per capitas shows that where an institution is low in the use of meat it is usually high in the use of eggs or farinaceous foods as compared with the other institutions.

The average per capita issue of food supplies for which there is a ration allowance is less than the present daily per capita allowance. Between the high and the low institutions there is quite a difference. The Committee, however, would be adverse to recommending that the high institutions be reduced to the per capita use of the lower ones unless it be brought about automatically and not in an arbitrary manner; for we feel it would be unfair to the institutions to expect that they could at once drop from the food supplies which they are now issuing to the quantities which the summary sheets show the low institutions use.

Such a