Walking on tip-toe, doing any thing in the room very slowly, are
injurious, for exactly the same reasons. A firm light quick step, a
steady quick hand are the desiderata; not the slow, lingering, shuffling
foot, the timid, uncertain touch. Slowness is not gentleness, though it
is often mistaken for such; quickness, lightness, and gentleness are
quite compatible. Again, if friends and doctors did but watch, as nurses
can and should watch, the features sharpening, the eyes growing almost
wild, of fever patients who are listening for the entrance from the
corridor of the persons whose voices they are hearing there, these would
never run the risk again of creating such expectation, or irritation of
mind.--Such unnecessary noise has undoubtedly induced or aggravated
delirium in many cases. I have known such--in one case death ensued. It
is but fair to say that this death was attributed to fright. It was the
result of a long whispered conversation, within sight of the patient,
about an impending operation; but any one who has known the more than
stoicism, the cheerful coolness, with which the certainty of an
operation will be accepted by any patient, capable of bearing an
operation at all, if it is properly communicated to him, will hesitate
to believe that it was mere fear which produced, as was averred, the
fatal result in this instance.
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