From The Lancet.

NURSING AS A FINE ART. FEW facts in reference to the sick and their welfare are more noticeable than the development of the art of nursing in recent years. Twenty years ago nursing was a luxury very much monopolized by hospital patients, and even in their case the luxury was somewhat of a coarse character. There were, of course, good, kind, and wise women in those days who had quick sympathies with the sick, and whose presence and ministrations in wards were like those of a mother or a good angel, but they were not plentiful, and the work done was often performed unskilfully and untenderly. It is not pleasant to recall what must have been the sufferings of the sick in earlier days in poorer hospitals, especially in poor-law hospitals, when given over for the night to the care of a nurse not considered good enough for day duty, and who prepared herself for her nocturnal work by copious potations of beer. The cry for a cup of water or for a change of posture by a thirsty or restless patient was often unheeded, or only heeded to be rebuked. When kindness was not at fault, intelligence was often wanting, and superstition and ignorance had it all their own way. The best proof that this is not an exaggeration is to be found in the prejudice which still survives against professional nurses. There are large numbers of educated people who would not consent on any terms to have a "hospital" nurse. It can scarcely be imagined that their objection is to the training received in hospitals. It must be traceable to experience of the old order of nursing, or to the survival of some of its bad traditions. The old order of nursing is not quite extinct. Practitioners of any standing could still give instances of nurses whose coarse ignorance and unkindness brought discredit on the order, who put the wrong end of the clini cal thermometer into the mouth, who seemed to think less of the patient than of themselves, who conceived of nursing as

consistent with Revelation at all. Is it intelligible that a true gospel should speak through one of its chosen teachers a threat in which there is no undertone of hope; and should speak through another of its chosen teachers a promise in which there is no undertone of dread? We can only say in reply, that not only in the utterances of different mouths.is there this tendency to teach what appear like inconsistent truths, but also in the utterances of the same mouth. Christ deliberately tells his disciples that with men that is impossible which is not impossible with God, for with God all things are possible. He deliberately tells them to say, after they had done all that is commanded, "We are unprofitable servants," and yet commands them to be "perfect, even as their Father in Heaven is perfect." He deliberately tells them that his gospel is the gospel of peace, and yet that it will bring not peace on earth, but a sword. He deliberately tells them that he who is not with them is against them, and again that he who is not against them is with them. His method, as far as we understand it, is to fix the minds of his disciples on the full significance of the moral principle which he is putting before them, whether it be full of promise or of terror, and not to distract their attention from it to any other. If he is speaking of the downward path, he shows how infinitely more difficult every step down renders every attempt to turn back. If he is speaking of the love of God, he shows how infinite in resources, beyond what we can understand, is the redeeming love which goes in search of the lost, and seeks to reclaim them. For our own parts, we should say that the only teaching that can be effective is this kind of teaching, though it seems to result not unfrequently in logical contradictions. Look at the path of evil, and there ap pears to be no hope. Look at the love of God, and there appears to be no fear. Look at both, and we cannot tell which predominates, so full of evil augury is the inevitable momentum of the downward career; so full of promise is the inexa calling requiring a large amount of stimhaustible mercy of the infinite love. So far from such contradictions suggesting to us that it is not Revelation with which we are dealing, we doubt whether, human nature being what it is, it would be possible for God to reveal truth to us without revealing what would suggest the most opposite conclusions, according to the different points of view from which we put our questions and try to construct our augury.

ulant, and who disgusted all the other members and servants of a household by the assumption of airs of superiority which neither their nursing powers nor their general intelligence justified. It is well worth the attention of all persons interested in nursing as a calling and in the welfare of the sick to consider the rea sons for the existence of a still great amount of prejudice against trained nurses. Some of it is to be explained by

and from other sources, Egypt was one of the most advanced nations of the earth probably had long been so and was the centre of commerce and civilization. In a certain sense it was, and is, the geographical centre of the earth. The trade of all the Eastern nations lie open to it, by way of the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. The trade of the Mediterranean and the West came to it at Alexandria, or its then equivalent port. The trade of eastern Africa came directly from the Nile. Cairo

can friends would call the “hub of the universe," in a commercial sense. All the most treasured products of the world were gathered there, and from thence they were redistributed. How was the redistribution effected? In part certainly by the trading fleets which congregated there, including the famous "ships of Tarshish"

too hard a view of their function in coming into a house, and by the absence of sympathy, sometimes sympathy even with the patient, who is treated too mechanically, as a mere model requiring dressing or bandaging. But a more common fault is the want of sympathy with friends, and the exaction of too much service from servants who are probably already overtaxed. It would be unreasonable to expect perfection in nurses. The very training they are subjected to gives them that little knowledge and that familiarity-"grand Cairo" was what our Ameriwith big words which are apt to spoil sim plicity and to produce conceit. But after all this criticism—and it is neither illnatured nor unjust truth compels us to say that medical men owe very much of their greater success in treatment to the greater efficiency of nursing, and that that patient who with an acute or prolonged disease refuses the help of a good nurse, not only does an injustice to the members of his household, but sensibly diminishes the chances and the rate of his recovery; and that for one nurse who is selfish or inconsiderate or incompetent, there are ten who are serviceable and sympathetic, and who add infinitely to the comfort of a sick room and to the good chances of a patient. Every now and again one meets with a nurse whose art is in every sense a fine art, and in whose way of making the bed of a patient, preparing his food, or dressing his wounds, there is an element of genius that is missing in all the boasted art of men. That this is likely to be a more and more common experience it is quite reasonable to hope, seeing the number of capable and refined women who give themselves to this work and to the training of others for it; and to the help which earnest and distinguished members of our own profession afford in the educa tion of nurses. Nursing must, in truth, be a fine art, or it is nothing. It is a calling in which coarseness is almost a crime, and in which every duty should be done delicately and lovingly. The presence of heavy headed and heavy-footed people with hard hands and harsh voices in a sick-room is the best illustration possible of an error loci.

From The Science Monthly. THE TRADE OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

FROM four to five thousand years ago, so we know from the Scripture records

now believed by the best authorities to have sailed from Spain, and not from the far East as was long supposed. Now while Egypt occupies so central a position regarding the water ways of the world, a glance at the map shows that it occupies an equally central position in relation to inland routes. From Cairo the great trading caravans periodically took their course into the several nations of the then world. On the north-east, by way of the Syrian Desert to Palestine and Asia Minor; by the east, over the same desert to the valley of the Euphrates, to Persia, Turkestan, India, China; by the south-east, to Arabia generally, including the famed city of Mecca; by the west, over the Libyan Desert, to the great cities of northern Africa. It was perhaps at a later date that they visited the eastern shores of the Baltic. King Solomon, who did so much to revive the trade of the Hebrew nation* (Judea), did not rely upon maritime trade alone. He either built, or more probably simply fortified, Baalbec and Palmyra (the latter especially) as caravan stations for the land commerce with eastern and southeastern Asia. At the same time, it is clear that trade was carried on between Babylon and the Syrian cities. As a general rule it may be stated that in all cities where the markets are found to have been held outside the gates, the trade has depended upon caravans. No inland city could flourish in the way of trade that was not periodically visited by trading caravans. At the present day, as visitors to Cairo know, an extended commerce is kept up with the interior of Africa by means of caravans.

Fifth Series,
Volume L.

}

No. 2129.-April 11, 1885.

{

From Beginning,
Vol. CLXV.

CONTENTS.

I. THE HERO OF LEPANTO AND HIS TIMES, Blackwood's Magazine,
II. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITself. By
Mrs. Oliphant. Part X.,

Chambers' Journal,

Fortnightly Review,
Blackwood's Magazine,

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From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE HERO OF LEPANTO AND HIS TIMES. NOTWITHSTANDING the marked leaning of the literary world towards biographies during the present century, our English writers had let 1900 come wellnigh upon them without their presenting us with a life of the hero of Lepanto. Now that the void has been ably filled, it is easy to perceive after the event what a fruitful field it was which was left for so long unworked. For it is not only as a conqueror and a prominent historical figure that Don John of Austria interests us. His career was run when the ten centuries of darkness had just closed; and the actions and circumstances of it apart from wars, politics, and religions are admirably illustrative of the social and moral condition of that attractive period. The curtain was already falling on the eld of fable, tradition, and twilight chronicle when he came upon the scene; and attending his few but eventful days appeared the dayspring of history, the dawn of the arts, the renaissance of poetry with its civilizing influence. At the same time there lay upon Europe enough of Middle Age shadow to prolong the waning empire of those cherished unrealities which are the province of romance, and which lend such delicious enchantment to days of old. A figure better worth exhibiting faithfully and particularly is not to be lighted on at every epoch.

There were, no doubt, sufficient reasons why the writing of the life of this illustrious personage by a British author was postponed; and one of these probably was, that the great historical events of which he was a great part have been amply recounted to us. But who, after feeding full of the stories of heroic achievements and of events big with the future of nations and races, can rise from his study without a yearning to know the personal story of one whose appearances in the great tableaux of the past have created such thrilling emotion? One of our foremost poets names in the same line,

plain of some discourtesy on the part of
posterity. We have abundant knowledge
of them who led at Actium. Of the hero
of Trafalgar English pens have not failed
to register the minutest particulars, which
English minds still receive with almost
the devotion due to sacred writings; but
somehow English curiosity concerning the
life of him who led the Christian fleets at
Lepanto and broke the power of the
dreaded Turk has, until lately, been pa
tient. Looking into Maunder's “Univer-
sal Biography," we find under the word
Austrea the following notice: "D. Juan,
a Spanish admiral, born in 1545; remem-
bered as the conqueror of the Turks at
Lepanto." A scant account this of a man
who took a prominent part in the most
important European affairs of his genera-
tion; whose praise was hymned by poets
and told out by orators and authors far and
near; who was without co-rival

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers ;

to whom the vicar of Christ thought it
proper to apply the words, "There was a
man sent from God whose name was
John."

We may say then, without fear of contradiction, that Sir William Stirling-Maxwell desired a good work when he set

himself to write unto us in order" the chief events of the life of the distinguished commander, Don John of Austria.* With what degree of success he achieved his purpose these pages are intended to discover in some sort. Our readers will find, as we think, that the author defined cor. rectly the scope of his task, that he has made the career of his subject the trunk line of his story; but that he has not hesitated to diverge from it judiciously at intervals, that he may place beside us, as we go along, pictures illustrative of the manners and customs of the time, and lucid descriptions of means and appli ances which have long been obsolete.

The work before us is the product of much learning and research, of which we are little able and little disposed to consti

Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar ! If these sea-fights deserve to be ranked Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, Bart. together, one of them certainly may com

Don John of Austria; or Passages from the History of the Sixteenth Century, 1547-1578. By the late London: Longmans, Green, & Co.