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A NURSE'S LIFE IN WAR AND PEACE

BY

E. C. LAURENCE, R.R.C.

AUTHOR OF "MODERN NURSING IN HOSPITAL AND HOME"

WITH A PREFACE BY

SIR FREDERICK TREVES, BART.
G.C.V.O., C.B., LL.D.


LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1912

[All rights reserved]


Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh




PREFACE


The charm of these letters, it will at once be found, depends upon their
simplicity, their artlessness, their obvious candour. They present a
plain, untinted account of a nurse's career, of the difficulties she has
to face, and the problems she has to solve. Those who wish to know
something of a nurse's life and times will find in this writing a
convincing narrative, unemotional and matter-of-fact.

This is no small merit, since the record of nursing experiences is apt
to be blurred by exaggeration or made nauseous by sickly romance. There
is pathos enough in the sick-room and in the presence of death, but
those who come in touch with it would do better to hush the knowledge in
their hearts, rather than to proclaim it on the house-tops. Apart from
this, the world must be a little weary of the astute sick child who
lisps melodrama into the ear of the "kind nurse," as well as of the
bizarre aphorisms of the dying tramp.

The faults of management and lapses of