The Knowing Age

Most modern nurses start training for their careers at 18, but it was not always so: the mother of the nursing sisterhood thought 18 much too young. In a letter published for the first time in the current British Medical Journal, Florence Nightingale gave some advice on the question.

"My dear Sir," wrote Nurse Nightingale to a friend in 1887, "your account of the young lady of 18 who wished to devote herself as a Nurse is so very interesting. But have you thought whether 18 is not too young, both physically and morally? There are sacred secrets belonging to the sick which 18 could not and ought not to be able to understand--and there are secrets, the very reverse of sacred, the secrets of vice, about Patients which their Nurse must know if she is not to be made a fool of; and which one shrinks from any young woman, gentle or simple, knowing. (Alas! the 'simple' know them far too soon!)

"A gentlewoman, or gentle girl, would either be shocked and run away. Or she would be hardened, which is the worse evil of the two.

"Whatever you take out of a woman in Nursing life before 23 or 24 you more than take out of her at the other end . . . We even prefer not admitting gentlewomen earlier than 26 or 27 for two reasons: one that gentlewomen are younger in knowingness than those who have had to rough it; the other that posts of superintendents will be theirs if they persevere . . . and 24 is too young to superintend.

"Having laid these things, as an old Nurse and Trainer, before you ... I will gladly see the young lady whenever we can make an appointment . . ."

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