Yet all these are generally comprehended in the one sweeping assertion that the patient has ‘no appetite.’”
“If you cannot get the habit of observation one way or other, you had better give up the being a nurse, for it is not your calling, however kind and anxious you may be.”
“It appears that scarcely any improvement in the faculty of observing is being made. Vast has been the increase of knowledge in pathology—that science which teaches us the final change produced by disease on the human frame—scarce any in the art of observing the signs of the change while in progress. Or, rather, is it not to be feared that observation, as an essential part of medicine, has been declining?”
“In dwelling upon the vital importance of sound observation, it must never be lost sight of what observation is for. It is not for the sake of piling up miscellaneous information or curious facts, but for the sake of saving life and increasing health and comfort. The caution may seem useless, but it is quite surprising how many men (some women do it too), practically behave as if the scientific end were the only one in view, or as if the sick body were but a reservoir for stowing medicines into, and the surgical disease only a curious case the sufferer has made for the attendant’s special information.”
“Pathology teaches the harm that disease has done. But it teaches nothing more. We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. And nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health.”
“Unnecessary noise, then, is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted on the sick or well. Unnecessary (although slight) noise injures a sick person much more than necessary noise, of a much greater amount. A good nurse will always make sure that no door or window in her patient’s room shall rattle or creak; that no blind or curtain shall, by any change of wind through the open window, be made to flap. If you wait till your patients tell you of these things, where is the use of their having a nurse.”