“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.”

The opening of the preface to Notes on Hospitals, in the enlarged third edition of 1863. Adaeze Nwosu quoted it from memory in the break at college, weeks ago, and I looked it up today on my phone.

I read it sitting outside a ward in Averley while they changed Mum's dressing: see 🕯️ Sitting in a hospital corridor in Averley. Nightingale goes on to say the principle needs stating because death rates inside hospitals were so much higher than for the same illnesses outside. She had counted.

A strange principle, and a good first requirement for most things. A product, to begin with.

The same test at work. Before asking what the Exceptions Inbox adds to a dispatcher's morning, ask whether it takes anything away: attention, trust in the list, ten minutes. Auto-triage on the night of 11 March did the sick some harm. We rolled it back.

Notes on Hospitals has no note of its own here, so the source is 🏛️ Florence Nightingale's own page.