Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not

How few there are who, by five or six pointed questions, can elicit the whole case, and get accurately to know and to be able to report where the patient is. [Sidenote: Means of obtaining inaccurate information.] I knew a very clever physician, of large dispensary and hospital practice, who invariably began his examination of each patient with "Put your finger where you be bad." That man would never waste his time with collecting inaccurate information from nurse or patient. Leading questions always collect inaccurate information. At a recent celebrated trial, the following leading question was put successively to nine distinguished medical men. "Can you attribute these symptoms to anything else but poison?" And out of the nine, eight answered "No!" without any qualification whatever. It appeared, upon cross-examination:--1. That none of them had ever seen a case of the kind of poisoning supposed. 2. That none of them had ever seen a case of the kind of disease to which the death, if not to poison, was attributable. 3. That none of them were even aware of the main fact of the disease and condition to which the death was attributable. Surely nothing stronger can be adduced to prove what use leading questions are of, and what they lead to. I had rather not say how many instances I have known, where, owing to this system of leading questions, the patient has died, and the attendants have been actually unaware of the principal feature of the case. [Sidenote: As to food patient takes or does not take.]