Health Reform and Nurses' Training-Schools
By Belle Wood-Comstock
Our nurses must be educators, or their training is in vain; they must not only be taught to be nurses, great as that work is, but they must be taught to be teachers. Not only to ease the suffering of sickness and disease must they go, but to teach, to educate the people everywhere to live so as to keep well, that they may have the greatest strength of body and the most efficiency in service. By practical experience our nurses become skilled in the care of the sick; so by practical experience they must attain efficiency as teachers of these vital foundation truths. How can we give them this experience? Our people need to be taught. Our nurses need experience in teaching. Happy combination! How easily accomplished! Take our nurses in training to our churches, and let them help teach the people. Then bring them back with new eyes rightly to represent this truth to our patients. We have held schools of health for people of the world in which we have presented the principles of healthful living in a scientific, physiologic way. By careful teaching we have shown them that to properly care for their bodies so as to prevent disease is the only sane and safe thing to do, and that to do this may be made a delight. We have shown them scientific reasons worked out by scientific men why meat is not the best food, and that when we can get better food prepared in an appetizing way, how unwise, how foolish, it is to eat that which must, if we continue to indulge in it, lessen the strength and resistive power of our bodies. We have shown them the advantages, the privileges, the pleasing side of health reform, and it has appealed to them. And we find the people of the world everywhere glad and willing to receive these things. But our own people, untaught, fail to appreciate the foundation principles which might make it possible for them to get the most883efficient service, and insure them happiness in the life to come. We have supposed our people knew all these things; but the most of them have seen only the restrictions, the burdens of so-called health reform, and we often, instead of teaching them even as much as we have taught outsiders, have criticized them for not living out the rules, which have often led to fanaticism, as an iron-clad rule will always do. Health reform must needs include infinitely more than simply the question of eating, important as that may be. It must include sunshine, fresh air, proper clothing, exercise, rest; yes, even mental rest—freedom from worry—obtained by the confidence of a religious faith. We must get our people to see that there is no sacrifice, there are no restrictions, in health reform. It is all a receiving of the bountiful goodness of God; a drinking in of his blessing, of his mercy; a willingness to receive his teaching because of our confidence in its bringing present happiness, and in its saving from future sorrow and distress. So, with such a burden on our hearts, and with the hope that it might be to our nurses the thing they were needing, we who are at Glendale began last January to hold schools of health in our churches in and about Los Angeles, of which there are twenty-five. Seven of these schools were held, giving thirty of our nurses an experience in assisting. Each school lasted six days, and included thirteen meetings. The program follows:— Sabbath, 11 A. M.—Study: Gospel of Health. Sabbath, 3 P. M.—Study: Including the following papers by nurses:— 1. Importance of Medical Missionary Work. 2. Opportunities of a Sanitarium Nurse While in Training. 3. Opportunities of a Sanitarium Nurse After Graduation. 4. How the Efficiency of the Bible Worker May Be Increased by the Nurses' Training. Saturday evening.—Lecture and demonstration: Exercise and Fresh Air. Sunday, 10 A. M.—Lecture and demonstration: Healthful Dress. Sunday, 2 P. M.—Lecture: Is Hygienic Cooking Practical in the Home? Sunday, 3-7 P. M.—Hygienic dinner served. Sunday, 7:30 P. M.—Lecture: Dietetic Reforms and Why. Monday, 8:30 P. M.—Lecture: Care of the Child. Tuesday, 3 P. M.—Lecture: Simple Recipes. Tuesday, 7:30 P. M.—Lecture and demonstration: Common Ailments and How to Treat Them. Wednesday, 3 P. M.—Lecture: Hygiene and Sanitation in the Home. Wednesday, 7:30 P. M.—Call for Workers. Thursday, 3 P. M.—Lecture and demonstration: Simple Treatments, Accidents and Emergencies. Thursday, 7:30 P. M.—Question Box. Four physicians, the head nurse, sanitarium matron, and sanitarium chef had a part. Besides these, four nurses went each time and spent the week helping in the demonstrations and visiting the people. As they visited, they gave treatments, answered questions, helped with sewing and cooking, gave Bible readings, sold cook-books, etc. They told their own personal experiences, and came very near to the hearts of the people. Each time they returned with a deeper Christian experience, a renewed consecration, and with their eyes opened to the importance of health reform and medical missionary work, and with a firm resolution to be loyal to all the truths of the third angel's message, to be true representatives of sanitarium principles, to live out the principles of health reform, using them as the entering wedge for which they were intended, both in their sanitarium experience and after their connection with the training-school was ended. This work has changed the atmosphere of our training-school; it has brought in a spirit of consecration and solemnity never felt before. Our patients have felt it; and never before have we had so many patients inquiring into our work and our message. These people as they come to us for treatment are seeing lived out before them in a sincere, heartfelt way, such as has not been seen before, the great principles which, if followed intelligently, will lead to health and happiness; and it is influencing them more and more to wonder what sort of religion it is that we have. Our nurses are enjoying their work, and putting their whole heart in it as never before. Somewhere, somehow, a converting power has come into their lives, some of whom had become to a great extent indifferent to their spiritual welfare; and we are forced to admit that it was their getting hold of real health reform principles that accomplished this improvement. The nurses who continue in this way will not be tempted as others to drift after they have been graduated. They will have an object, a purpose, in view that will hold them. They will realize why they have taken their course: that they are to go out as representatives of our sanitarium system; that they are to take sanitarium principles with them wherever they go; that they are to be a small sanitarium with all its possibilities to all they meet; that wherever they go they go as Christ's representatives, as medical missionaries, approximating more closely his work for the people than any other worker can ever do. And they realize that to be disloyal to sanitarium principles is to be indifferent to the whole third angel's message; that if any one was ever thoroughly prepared to give the people, wherever she may find them, a complete education in all lines of truth, it is a sanitarium nurse. This it has done for our training-school. Much might be said of our success in our work for the people. We have found them everywhere appreciative; we have everywhere heard testimonials to the fact that they see the importance of health reform as never before; that they are going to live it out more carefully in a sensible, intelligent way. We have seen prejudice against our sanitarium work broken down. We have felt the Spirit of the Lord come very near as we have heard the people express their desire to make their homes small sanitariums, to live out these principles and give them to their neighbors, and to work as they never have before to hold up the hands of our sanitarium leaders, that this branch of our work may go forward, being indeed to the message as the right arm to the body. This work must continue. We have gone too far, felt too much of the Lord's blessing, to go back or even to stand still. We feel that we have reached a new era in our work, and with the Lord's help we will go forward, being to our nurses, our people, and the world the light we should long ago have been. Our work is educational. If we forget that, and simply treat the bodies of men and women as they come, giving them nothing more, we fall short. We may have wondered why we have been bound down by debt, why we have been hampered in our progress. The Lord has not dared to prosper us until we got a vision of the work intended for us to do. Without this vision, prosperity would have meant commercialism and spiritual failure. With it there is no limit to our ability to achieve success in every way, financially as well as otherwise. We are to educate, educate, educate the people. Then with our lamps burning, the Gentiles will come to our light and kings to the brightness of our rising, and the message will go speedily to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people; and then the end will come. BELLE WOOD-COMSTOCK, M. D.