Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

en a doctor and his patient. The accusations that just lately have been showered on the nurses, they deserve, it seems to me, no more than any other class of young women who share our common human nature. The blame rests with those who select the nurse — first the matron of the hospital or institution, and then the person who chooses her for the individual case. The commonest of our national faults, and one which affects all our health regulations, is surely that we sanction the obvious causes of a situation, and then are HEALTH 301 surprised and grumble at their inevitable consequences. It is not so much a question of morality as of mere worldly common-sense and expediency. The laws which should regulate such a new departure are not yet formed — nursing, according to our modern ideas, being scarcely a quarter of a century old. As long as the world lasts and women are women, give them certain circumstances and a sufficient temptation, and nothing will keep them straight. Some women, too, take to nursing because early trouble has made other openings difficult for them. Under those circumstances we meet the most dangerous type of woman that exists ; the world has turned against her, and thereby caused her to become hard and bad, and the enemy of society — the type that crushes, by all the means in her power, any other woman who con- sciously or unconsciously crosses the path of her conquest. Few people seem to consider that the training of a nurse is more hardening, and more likely to unsex a woman, than the training of an actress. At any rate, it is im- possible to go through it without becoming very much better or very much worse than the ordinary woman. In France they understand human nature better than we do, and would never dream of allowing our system of nursing. Nurses in Paris are, I believe, most difficult to get. We want more regulations and more judicious assistance from public opinion. The French want an increased staff of nurses who are well conducted and not too young, to supplement the devoted, high-minded, deeply religious class of women who can alone join the Sister- hoods, as they apparently are insufficient in number. Time, the greatest adjuster of all human difficulties, will settle these matters. What concerns us is that no turn of fortune's wheel should crush and injure ourselves or those belonging to us; and what matters now is that ordinary knowledge and common- sense on the subject of 302 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN health should be brought to bear by every woman responsible in any way for the well-being of others, and especially of the young. Public opinion, I am glad to say, does not forgive a mother's neglect of her children's physical condition ; and the condemnation is severe when a boy, after all his work and passing his hard examina- tions, is plucked in the medical examination for some slight physical defect — it may be nothing worse than neglected corns or a crooked toe — which with ordinary care in childhood or a slight operation might have been entirely cured. Is it stinginess, or is it idleness, or is it ignorance, or is it mere selfishness and a dislike to acknowledge delicacy in their own children, or a half- conscientious repudiation of responsibility and a blind trust in Providence, that makes so many parents allow life-long misery and suffering to come upon their children just for the want of