A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware.

  • John F. W. Ware
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    often deferred between the subsiding of disease and the going out to life again. There is a power in active disease which soon convinces a man that it is useless for him to struggle, that his best wisdom is quietly to submit, and let disease have its way. He is held down to his bed ; his doctor, his nurse have him under subjection. He cannot rebel. He must obey. Besides, the sick man soon becomes recon- ciled to his bed. It is the only relief to his languor or his pain. He comes to say of it what Sancho once said of sleep: Blessings on tlie man who in- vented a bed. But convalescence is a different thing. Active disease has passed away, and the hope of health has taken its place. The doctor has ceased his medicines, the bed is no longer our one place of abode. We are beginning to move about. Other people lose much of their interest and sympathy, for danger is over. Their thought is no longer de- tained by our condition. They turn to something else. We are left to ourselves, to our own resour- ces. At the time we want and should prize atten- tions we are deprived of them. Weakened in mind, as body, we become easily depressed. We chafe at the lagging hours. We constantly put ourselves back by our efforts to get forward. We become peevish, discontented, unreasonable, despondent, un- comfortable to ourselves, uncomfortable to those about us. Our peculiar natural infirmities come out
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