The inexperienced nurse was inducted gradu ally into the role of care in which the wisdom and sensitivity needed to touch the human body was learned. The good nurse did not regard some tasks as menial and unworthy, to be handed down to others who were less elevated. Washing the patient, dealing with excrement, urine, vomit, sputum, and cleaning his or her soiled body, was an essential part of care. Nurses in this Nightin- gale tradition were not dealing with the manage- rial, technical, spiritual or emotional only, as if this was a higher plane, they were dealing with the per- son in his or her wholeness, including the manage- rial, technical, spiritual and emotional, but including also, and crucially, the base physical the diseased and often broken body. To become a nurse was not just to enter into a contractual obli- gation dependent on reward, it was to enter into a covenant that was regardless of reciprocation.