“A sick person intensely enjoys hearing of any material good, any positive or practical success of the right. He has so much of books and fiction, of principles, and precepts, and theories; do, instead of advising him with advice he has heard at least fifty times before, tell him of one benevolent act which has really succeeded practically,—it is like a day’s health to him. You have no idea what the craving of sick with undiminished power of thinking, but little power of doing, is to hear of good practical action, when they can no longer partake in it.”
“The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe—how to observe—what symptoms indicate improvement—what the reverse—which are of importance—which are of none—which are the evidence of neglect—and of what kind of neglect. All this is what ought to make part, and an essential part, of the training of every nurse.”
“Courts of justice seem to think that anybody can speak ‘the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ if he does but intend it. It requires many faculties combined of observation and memory to speak ‘the whole truth,’ and to say ‘nothing but the truth.’
“‘I knows I fibs dreadful, but believe me, Miss, I never finds out I has fibbed until they tells me so,’ was a remark actually made. It is also one of much more extended application than most people have the least idea of.”
“There may be four different causes, any of which will produce the same result, viz., the patient slowly starving to death from want of nutrition:
- 1. Defect in cooking;
- 2. Defect in choice of diet;
- 3. Defect in choice of hours for taking diet;
- 4. Defect of appetite in patient.