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

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. Yet all these are generally comprehended in the one sweeping assertion that the patient has "no appetite." Surely many lives might be saved by drawing a closer distinction; for the remedies are as diverse as the causes. The remedy for the first is to cook better; for the second, to choose other articles of diet; for the third, to watch for the hours when the patient is in want of food; for the fourth, to show him what he likes, and sometimes unexpectedly. But no one of these remedies will do for any other of the defects not corresponding with it. I cannot too often repeat that patients are generally either too languid to observe these things, or too shy to speak about them; nor is it well that they should be made to observe them, it fixes their attention upon themselves. Again, I say, what is the nurse or friend there for except to take note of these things, instead of the patient doing so?[3] [Sidenote: As to diarrhoea] Again, the question is sometimes put, Is there diarrhoea? And the answer will be the same, whether it is just merging into cholera, whether it is a trifling degree brought on by some trifling indiscretion, which will cease the moment the cause is removed, or whether there is no diarrhoea at all, but simply relaxed bowels.