scholarly journals “…so much immortal wealth”: Life in the Sick-Room by Harriet Martineau as Eco-Sustainable Narrative

Le Simplegadi ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 223-237
Author(s):  
Loredana Salis
Keyword(s):  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
Sick Room

Victorian Pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
First Time

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.

Note on Female Nursing in an Asylum Male Sick-room

1896 ◽  
Vol 42 (179) ◽  
pp. 787-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Medical Officer ◽  
Female Side ◽  
Head Nurse ◽  
General Observation ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Male Side ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
Sick Room ◽  
Room Nursing ◽  
To Receive

My object in this paper is to give a brief note of a trial which has recently been made in the Fife Asylum, in the way of introducing female nursing in the male sick-room. Nursing is peculiarly woman's province; and it has, I believe, often been felt that it would be a great advantage if female care could be more freely utilised in the management of male insane patients, or at least of those of them who are suffering from special bodily disease in addition to the mental symptoms. The main objections to the step have hitherto been: (1) that some of the habits and peculiarities of the male insane may make it unfit or undesirable to have them under female care; and (2) that in many asylums the structural arrangement makes it difficult or impossible to bring the male sick-room under systematic supervision by the female staff. Lately it was necessary to build a large addition to the Fife Asylum; and advantage was taken of this opportunity to get rid of the second objection mentioned. The new building is a hospital block, and is intended to receive recent admissions, cases requiring special observation on account of their mental state, and cases of bodily illness. Each side (male and female) is divided into three sections: 1st, sickroom proper (for cases of bodily illness); 2nd, special observation ward (intended for new cases, and cases needing continuous supervision on account of suicidal or other dangerous tendency); and 3rd, general observation ward. There are the usual dining-hall, kitchen, and administrative rooms in the centre of the building. The male and female sick-rooms are placed next to the administrative portion, one on each side; and as the doors here are unlocked during the day, with free communication by the corridor, the male sick-room is easily reached from the female side, and is administered by the matron, the head nurse (who has charge of both sick-rooms), and two junior nurses. Each sick-room communicates with a special observation dormitory, beyond which again is the special observation day-room. This dormitory is empty during the day, but receives at night the cases which require continuous supervision on account of suicidal tendency, and which come to it direct from the special observation day-room. On the male side the door between the sick-room and the observation dormitory is kept locked during the day; and there is thus no direct communication between the sick-room and those parts of the male side which are under the charge of attendants, except by the general corridor. When the Medical Officer makes the evening visit, this door is unlocked, and the sick-room and observation dormitory are thrown into one and come under the charge of a male attendant, who is on duty during the whole night, while the nurses return to the female side of the building. This plan was followed because our numbers are too small to require separate attendance in the two rooms; and in this way the sick-room is under female care during the day, but is supervised at night by the male staff.∗

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