The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary nevertheless to lay down such a principle.

We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. Nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs.

Perhaps, if prematurely we dismiss ourselves from this world, all may even have to be suffered through again - the premature birth may not contribute to the production of another being, which must be begun again from the beginning.

Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.