NURSES AND THE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION ACT.

107 90 per cent. became infected with typhoid fever within claim and then took legal proceedings to obtain compensaweeks from the date of mobilisation, yet to-day, tion for accidental injury would be acting dishonourably, but in the same period after mobilisation, but with modern that is another matter, and the opportunity for doing so health regulations and antityphoid vaccination, only one would rarely arise, as the employer who was prudent enough; case of typhoid fever has appeared, and that in the case to take into consideration the question of possible accidents. of a teamster who was not vaccinated. A large part of the when engaging a nurse would hardly be so foolish as-research work, though not all, as a result of which these to be a party to a contract which everyone knows to be jsplendid results have been attained, has been done by army legally void. To refer again to the question of our medical officers, and President Taft concluded by con- correspondent, which he confines to the case of a nurse gratulating the medical profession at large that " they have "not attached to an institution,"we do not limit our view of had the opportunity, and have seized it, to make such the patient’s liability to nurses who, so to speak, earn theirprogress in relieving the suffering of the human race and in living as "free-lances." Nurses may sometimes go out to becoming in so conspicuous a way the benefactors of attend cases under such conditions that the institution mankind." In these days a movement of real progress employing them is, and remains, liable to compensate them. rapidly spreads from one nation to another, and if the for accidents. There must, however, be a large proportion of example set by the Medical Club of Philadelphia in bringing instances in which the nurse may acknowledge the authorityinto close touch the administrative authorities of the country of an institution which to some extent controls her conduct. with the economic work of its medical profession, military, and is responsible for her welfare, but in which she is in fact naval, and civil, should so spread, it will have deserved the temporarily in the service of a patient who, while engaging-. her through the institution, becomes her employer quite. thanks of all peoples as well as of the medical profession. sufficiently to give her the right to claim against him. In. NURSES AND THE WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION the circumstances we venture the opinion that a thoroughly ACT. prudent patient would insure his nurse and that aree A MEDICAL man has recently inquired whether a patient obliging medical adviser might earn his gratitude by recomemploying a private nurse (not attached to any institution mending him to do so. We are not aware of any special and therefore not already insured by an employer) is liable to policies issued for such occasions by insurance companies, compensate her if she meets with an accident in the course but they may exist, and in any case could easily be devised of her service with him. The question was evidently to meet exigencies which so frequently arise. The amount, intended to refer to the ordinary circumstances of nursing a that they would add to the ordinary expenses of medical and. case of temporary illness, where the nurse remains for a nursing attendance in illness would be comparatively small,. short time, perhaps for a few days only, in the patient’s and they would provide against contingencies which when. employment ; and our correspondent also alluded to the they occur may be of a serious character. obvious inconvenience to the patient of effecting insurance under such conditions, suggesting that the difficulty THE NECROPSY OF NAPOLEON I. might be met by the nurse insuring herself "as if SEVERAL of our correspondents have alluded recently to she were her own employer." We may point out the pathological conditions which may or may not have here that the question of insurance is not one with largely influenced some of the dramatic events of the careerwhich the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, concerns of that superlatively great man, Napoleon. Some, if little, itself. It provides that employers shall pay compensais thrown on the subject of Napoleon’s health by the tion upon a prescribed scale to persons employed by light of his necropsy in the well-known work of Dr. description them, in the event of such persons meeting with acci- Arnott, ’’An Account of the Last Illness, Decease, and Postdents and claiming such compensation, but the employers mortem Appearances of Napoleon Bonaparte, to which i are left to decide for themselves whether they shall protect added a letter to Lieutenant-General Sir Hulson Lowe,; themselves against loss by insurance or not. There can be K.C.B., etc., giving a Succinct Statement of Napoleon little doubt that a nurse attending a case in a private family Disease and Demise" (published by John in the ordinary circumstances inquired about by our corre- Bonaparte’s Murray in 1822). Archibald Arnott, who was an M.D., spondent comes within the definition of"a person who has states in the preface to his little book, that " no entered into or works under a contract of service or apprenticeother English medical person saw him in his deathship with an employer, whether by way of manual labour, bed sickness." The ex-Emperor, indeed, would only receiveclerical work, or otherwise," and that such exceptions as are the professional visits of Professor Antomarchi and of provided for do not in ordinary cases, at any rate, apply to Arnott, and he went so far, we are told by the latter, nurses. Equally there can be no question that a nurse’s as to extract a promise from his" family," or entourage, that calling exposes her to a risk of accident rather more than if at any time he became insensible no other medical man is the case with many employed persons. Her risk, at any should be called in. Arnott confesses that his notes had rate, is greater than that of most domestic servants. These been written in haste, "not with the most distant. latter are, as a rule, insured by their employers, but prob- always view of their ever meeting the eye of the public." Neverably the insurance of the nurse, who in the sudden emertheless, these hasty private notes, which, reprinted, only fill gency of illness becomes one of the employed, is rarely two columns in a small gazette,are now a chief authority on thought of. The suggestion that she should insure herself does the post-mortem appearances of one of the greatest figures’ not, strictly speaking, meet the difficulty. There is nothing to of the last century. We reprint the Report of Appearances prevent a nurse from insuring herself against accident, illness, on the Dissection of the Body of Napoleon Bonaparte"’ or anything else, and the nature of her occupation makes it our readers to draw what conclusions they may and leave obvious that this is an exceedingly prudent and proper thing ’’ On a superficial view the body appeared very therefrom. for her to do. It would not, however, protect her employer was confirmed by the first incision down state which if she were to do so, even though she were to tell him that fat, where the fat was upwards of one inch thick over its centre, she was insured on entering his house and to undertake to and one inch and a half over the abdomen. On the sternum, bring no claim for compensation against him, because the the cartilages of the ribs, and exposing the Act provides that there shall be no " contracting out" of its cutting through 1 provisions. Of course, a nurse who undertook to bring no Reprinted in John Bull, Oct. 13th, 1822.

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