Or: At 10
P.M. I am never with my patient; but quiet is of no less
consequence to him at 10 than it was at 5 minutes to 10.
Curious as it may seem, this very obvious consideration occurs
comparatively to few, or, if it does occur, it is only to cause the
devoted friend or nurse to be absent fewer hours or fewer minutes from
her patient--not to arrange so as that no minute and no hour shall be
for her patient without the essentials of her nursing.
[Sidenote: Illustrations of the want of it.]
A very few instances will be sufficient, not as precepts, but as
illustrations.
[Sidenote: Strangers coming into the sick room.]
A strange washerwoman, coming late at night for the "things," will burst
in by mistake to the patient's sick-room, after he has fallen into his
first doze, giving him a shock, the effects of which are irremediable,
though he himself laughs at the cause, and probably never even mentions
it. The nurse who is, and is quite right to be, at her supper, has not
provided that the washerwoman shall not lose her way and go into the
wrong room.
[Sidenote: Sick room airing the whole house.
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