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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![you that you were not clean before, however much soap and water you have used. These flakes are what require removing. And you can really keep yourself cleaner with a tumbler of hot water and a rough towel and rubbing, than with a whole apparatus of bath and soap and sponge, without rubbing. It is quite nonsense to say that anybody need be dirty. Patients have been kept as clean by these means on a long voyage, when a basin full of water could not be aftbrded, and when they could not be moved out of their berths, as if all the appurtenances of home had been at hand. Washing, however, with a large quantity of water has quite other effects than those of mere cleanliness. The skin absorbs the water and becomes softer and more perspirable. To wash with soap and soft water is, therefore, desirable from other points of view than that of cleanliness. XII. CHATTEEING HOPES AND ADVICES. Advising the The sick man to his advisers. sick. My advisers ! Their name is legion. # * # Somehow or other, it seems a provision of the universal destinies, that every man, woman, and child should consider him, her, or itself privileged especially to advise me. Why ? That is precisely what I want to know. And this is what I have to say to them. I have been advised to go to every place extant in and out of England—to take every kind of exercise by every kind of cart, carriage—yes, and even swing (!) and dumb-bell (!) in existence; to imbibe every different kind of stimulus that ever has been invented. And this when those hest fitted to know, viz , medical men, after long and close attendance, had declared any journey out of the question, had prohibited any kind of motion whatever, had closely laid down the diet and drink. What would my advisers say, were they the medical attendants, and I the patient left their advice, and took the casual adviser's ? But the singularity in Legion's mind is this : it never occurs to him that everybody else is doing the same thing, and that I the patient must perforce say, in sheer self-defence, like llosalind, I could not do with all. Chattering Chattering Hopes may seem an odd heading. But I really hopes the bane believe there is scarcely a greater worry which invalids have to endure .f xi_ ^. ^]^^jj ^}jQ incurable hopes of their friends. There is no one practice against which I can speak more strongly from actual personal expe- rience, wide and long, of its effects during sickness observed both upon others and upon myself. I would appeal most seriously to all friends, visitors, and attendants of the sick to leave off this practice of attempting to cheer the sick by making light of their danger and by exaggerating their probabilities of recovery. Far more now than formerly does the medical attendant tell the truth to the sick who are really desirous to hear it about their own «tate. of the sick.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452548_0064.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
