The Soldier Who Fights Death

I am not exaggerating in the least if I say that the most important mark of social progress, and the worthiest of attention, is the general level of health a nation enjoys. To the degree that the health level of any nation is high, to that degree is the nation advanced.

The diseases that spread among nations, and everything connected with them in the way of treatment, prevention, and scientific guidance, can be eliminated only by effective agents — the agents that science has placed in the service of humanity, entrusting to the nurse the task of carrying out the greater part of the work... The task of nursing is a very arduous one, but woman, with her strength of will and her endurance for sustained work, has been able to master these hardships, because she has found, in the doing of her work, a great consolation in easing humanity's pains and misery. Advanced governments, the proprietors of hospitals, scientists, and physicians have felt what noble work the nurse performs in the field of humanity; they have respected her, valued her mission at its true worth, and made her the essential agent in the defense of health in general and in the fight against epidemics of every kind.

The profession of nursing requires two important elements: scientific study and psychological study... The nursing colleges admit among their students only those who hold the secondary certificate. There the student spends three years in scientific instruction, covering many of the subjects studied by the students of medicine themselves, in addition to the practical lessons, the special examinations, and the working methods she acquires in the hospital where she studies.

And may I draw attention to this girl on whom the world smiles, because she has worn away as yet only a few of its years? Do you see her, sweeping along in white garments that are a symbol of purity and love? She keeps watch through the long nights at the sick man's side, no eyelid of hers closing; she gives him his medicine, helps him to bear his pains, and comforts him, to restore to his soul the hope of life — all this while her sweet smile never leaves her lips, because she reads in the depths of this patient laid out before her that he needs the contented smile and the sweet consolation more than he needs treatment and medicine... May I draw the attention of public opinion to the fact that the profession of nursing is an honorable, lofty, and secure profession, whose hardships and burdens can be borne only by one whose soul is adorned with strength, faith, and love. May Lebanese public opinion know that the nurse is an effective member of the medical body, walking side by side with the physician: at his side she strives, helps, and works to know the disease and relieve it in the hospital; in the laboratories she searches with the physician for the elements and the germs, and works to understand how they are transmitted and how they spread, and then the ways of guarding against them.

And in the maternity homes she is the best of all at showing tenderness to the child and taking him in charge with care and rearing.

If we had a sufficient number of registered nurses, we would fit out traveling hospitals to tour the remote regions of Lebanon, where there is no trace of medicine or medical care, teaching the people the ways of preventing diseases and epidemics, distributing medicines among them, and vaccinating them against these diseases.

If we had a sufficient number of nurses, the number of deaths in the country would fall; the government could open the doors of the prisons before them, to visit the prisoners and supervise their state of health; and the government would oblige every factory and workshop to contract with a nurse or

... The accomplished Miss Elvira Jureidini was one of the delegates who represented Lebanon at the international congress of Eastern women held in Stockholm. Miss Jureidini brought back pleasant memories of life in that country distinguished by its progress, and here she tells the readers of "The Woman's Voice" about some of these experiences:

Three things took hold of me when my feet touched the capital of Sweden.

The streets and alleys gleam with cleanliness, and your eye does not fall on so much as a scrap of paper. My Swedish companion astonished me when I offered her a piece of chocolate: she hid the wrapper in her pocket until we reached the house, and then threw it into the wastebasket!!

As for order — speak of it and spare nothing. Even the children know where they must walk, and though the streets are crowded with passers-by you hear not a sound, not the honk of a motorcar: the green signal is for the pedestrians to cross the road while the cyclists and motorists halt, and the red signal is for the pedestrians to stop crossing to the opposite side of the street... I learned for myself how firmly the Swede holds to order when I entered a shop five minutes after six in the evening and pointed with my hand at the black grapes displayed in the shop window, meaning that I wanted a kilo. He answered me in Swedish, speaking as though with respect, and I thought he was directing me to another kind of grape; I turned my head to where he was pointing and found nothing. When he saw my confusion, and that I did not understand what he was saying, he came up to me kindly, took my hand, led me outside the shop, and made me understand that he could not sell me anything after six o'clock, because that is the rule...

And honesty... here is another example of what I witnessed with my own eyes. While we were visiting one of the vocational schools, and a little before we entered the school, my Swedish companion cried out: "I have lost my glove."

We went in, made the round of that great institution, and took our lunch; it was about four o'clock when we came out by another exit, into a street other than the one by which we had entered. After half an hour's walk, while we were looking at the shop windows, my eye fell on my companion's glove, pinned with a pin to one of the shop doors. She cried, "That is my glove!" and went and took it... That is honesty!...

It happened that the Turkish delegates went to the cinema, and after they had paid and taken their seats they found that the film was in Swedish with the subtitles in Italian, so they left the hall — and as they were going out the ticket-seller called after them and gave them back their money!

On one of our rounds of the shops of Stockholm, the delegate of Turkey came out, and after some distance she wished to buy something; she checked her money and found it short by 100 kronor. She looked about, bewildered, trying to collect her thoughts to remember where she had lost it — when a young man came up to her politely and handed her the hundred kronor folded inside a paper! He explained to her that the note had fallen from her as she was going out, and he had come himself to return it!

These are samples of what I saw with my own eyes; perhaps we may draw from them some lessons... and perhaps there is in them a moral for whoever will take heed...

more, out of care for the health of its workers and its men.

At present, however, the number is very small, ill-suited to the progress and flourishing that Lebanon ought to enjoy... Has it ever occurred to us to ask what our fate would be if — God forbid — a new world war broke out, and our hospitals and our homes were crowded with the wounded and the maimed? I call even upon the girls' secondary schools to give their students lessons in nursing and in the first principles of prevention and treatment...

The girl of our country is fit to be a soldier in defense of the people's health, in peace and in war alike. And after she has studied the art of nursing, she can be a wife worthy of love and respect, because she knows how to rear and how to refine. She will thereby have preserved the health of her family, and made of her children individuals who keep order and cleanliness and respect the laws.