denomination of remedies;" for patients can take
this who reject everything else, and can maintain
life on it into the bargain. Cream, in many
long chronic cases, is irreplaceable by any other
article whatever: milk stands next to it. Eggs
are seldom to be admitted, excepting,
perhaps, beaten up with wine; and, save in the
case of scorbutic patients, who crave for them,
sweets, jams, sugared drinks, or sugared tea,
come under the strictest ban. Especially with
fever patients, whose furred tongues and parched
throats demand something sharp or pungent. Tea
and coffee are both good as restoratives, but tea
is the best, being the more digestible; yet neither
ought to be given after five o'clock in the
afternoon, as both help to keep up the excitement
which causes sleepless nights. On the other
hand, a cup of tea given at five or six in the
morning, after one of these sleepless nights,
will often tranquillise and compose the patient,
and send him off into a sleep of two or three
hours. Typhus patients often refuse their
tea, and one of the first signs of their recovery
is their asking for it again. Some attempts
have been made to substitute cocoa for tea and
coffee; but independently of the fact that the
English sick dislike it, it has no restorative
power. It is an oily starchy nut that
increases fat: and does no more. " It is pure
mockery of the sick to call it a substitute for
tea;" and, " for any renovating stimulus it has,
you might just as well offer them chesnuts
instead of tea," says Miss Nightingale, scornfully.
Arrowroot is an excellent vehicle for
wine, but has no great nutritive power in
itself; buttermilk is often of exceeding
service, especially in fevers; even cheese has
been found of much value, and that too under
circumstances of disease which would seem
specially to exclude it. But Nature sometimes
plays false to all known science, and
asserts her independence in the most
extraordinary language.

"Feverishness is generally supposed to be a
symptom of fever— in nine cases out of ten it is
a symptom of bedding:" a symptom of piles of
mattresses, with perhaps a feather-bed or two
on the top, never unpicked, never cleansed,
never changed or aired, and saturated with the
moisture of the patient. Have only an iron
bedstead with a thin mattress, light Witney
blankets, no counterpane, no valance, no
curtains. If possible, have two such beds for the
very sick, who are obliged to be always in bed,
and change the patient's resting-place every
twelve hours. In the mean time, hang up the
bed-clothes to air, and throw the bed open for
the same purpose. Let the bed be low; if you
make it too high the patient feels like a
sandwich between floor and ceiling; and let it be
even with the throat of the chimney, and that in
the current of best air; also let it be small, so that
a nurse can easily manage it alone. Do not place
it with one side to the wall; never put a tray
down on it; let it be set in the lightest part of the
room, and where the patient can look out of
the window; in case of bed sores, eschew
blankets underneath, for they act as poultices
and retain the damp. And let there be light—
sunlight purifies, renovates, strengthens;
unless in certain acute, nervous, or ophthalmic
cases, light is almost always craved by the sick—
always and without exception by the weakly
convalescent, to whom it acts as a tonic and a
stimulant. If possible, have your walls painted
with oil paint, which can be washed; cultivate
a horror of the ordinary unglazed
bedroom papers, which absorb the dirt from the
air, cannot be cleansed, and are mostly held
to their places by putrid paste. Abolish carpets,
and have the floor perpetually swept and
washed; but there is no good flooring in
England. The Berlin lacquered floor is the only
perfect thing of its kind; the English absorbent
wood, covered with a wide woollen carpet, the
worst. Never offer advice. " Chattering hopes
and advices" are moral nuisances that cannot be
admitted for a moment. To talk cheerfully is
not to exaggerate chances of recovery, or to
make light of present danger; sympathy does
not mean the proffering of all sorts of wild
opinions, when the medical man is in strict
attendance and must know best what ought to
be done— when, too, the adviser does not know
all the facts of the case, nor the circumstances
of the patient, and can only judge of the broken
leg by looking at the bedclothes. Have immense
faith in " baby." Bring in baby for a minute, or a
quarter of an hour, as the case may be; and
those cool lips, those little fresh unconscious
hands, those sweet wondering radiant eyes, will
help the poor patient more than all the stupid
words of all the foolish people in the world.
Baby is a blessed creature in the sick-room, and
has its little mission of cheerfulness and good.
And a bit of pleasant news, a bit of good fortune
happening to any of your friends, is good
too, and brings a little of the outside cheerfulness
of life flushing like health and youth into
the chamber.

The chief mental or intellectual quality in a
nurse is, perhaps, the power of observation.
An unobservant nurse is as great a
mistake as Elephant or Muff, and the rest of the
failures I have spoken of; a nurse who
confounds, instead of distinguishing between, similar
symptoms, is apt to lead her patient with no
lagging step into the grave. But this is a
knowledge which comes only by experience,
actual bedside experience, coupled with superior
teaching, and, therefore, the want of it should
not be too severely visited. It only helps us to
understand the full importance of competent
nursing, and to hope, with Miss Nightingale,
that this may be made a matter of scientific
training and teaching, and that all professional
nurses, at least, may be obliged to go
through a regular system of instruction which
shall qualify them for their work into something
very different from Grimbones or Mrs.
Gamp.

To this end, and to every other end ever so
remotely connected with nurses of every grade,
and with nursing of every kind, Miss Nightingale's