Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
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![themselves bound to exercise their judgment; they leave it to the patient. Now I am quite sure that it is better for a patient ratlier, to suffer these neglects than to try to teach his nurse to nurse him, if she does not know how. It ruffles him, and if he is ill he is in no condition to teach, especially upon himself. The above remarks apply much more to private nursing than to hospitals. I would say to the nurse, have a rule of thought about your Xurse must patient's diet; consider, remember how much he has had, and how bave some rule much he ought to have to-day. Generally, the only rule of the *^[^^^if^^ private patient's diet is what the nurse has to give. It is true she patient's diet cannot give him what she has not got; but his stomach does not wait for her convenience, or even her necessity.* If it is used to having its stimulus at one hour to-day, and to-morrow it does not have it, because she has failed in getting it, he will suffer. She must be always exercising her ingenuity to supply defects, and to remedy accidents which will happen among the best contrivers, but from which the patient does not suffer the less, because they cannot be helped. One very minute caution,—take care not to spill into your Keep your patient's saucer, in other words, take care that the outside bottom patieut's cup rim of his cup shall be quite dry and clean ; if, every time he lifts his ^l^y under- cup to his lips, he has to carry the saucer with it, or else to drop ^®^^'^' the liquid upon, and to soil his sheet, or his bed-gown, or pillow, or if he is sitting up, his dress, you have no idea what a ditl'erence this minute want of care on your part makes to his comfort and even to his willingness for food yil. WHAT FOOD ? I will mention one or two of the most common errors among Common women in charge of sick respecting sick diet. One is the belief that errorji in diet. beef tea is the most nutritive of all articles. Xow, just try and boil down a lb. of beef into beef tea, evaporate your beef tea, and Beef tea. see what is left of your beef. You will find that there is barely a tea- spoonful of solid nourishment to half a pint ofwater in beef tea;—never- theless there is a certain reparative quality in it, we do not know what, as there is in tea;—but it may safely be given in almost any inflammatory disease, and is as little to be depended upon with the healthy or convalescent where much nourishment is required. Again, it is an ever ready saw that an Qg(]^ is equivalent to a lb. of meat,— whereas it is not at all so. Also, it is seldom noticed with how many * Why, liecausc the nurse has not got some food to-flay which the patient takes, Xursc must can the patient wait four hours for food to day, who could not wait two lioursycstcr- have some rule day ? Yet this is the only logic one gencrall/heard. On the other hand, the other of time about logic, viz., of the nurse giving a patient a thing because she /las got it, is equally the patient's fatal. If she happens to have fresh jelly, or fresh fruit, she will frequently give diet, it to the patient half-anhour after his dinner, or at his <linncr, when he cannot possibly eat that and the broth too—or worse still leave it by his bedside till he is so sickened with the sight of it, that he cannot eat it at all.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452561_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
