A spoonful of beef-tea, of arrowroot and wine, of egg
flip, every hour, will give them the requisite nourishment, and prevent
them from being too much exhausted to take at a later hour the solid
food, which is necessary for their recovery. And every patient who can
swallow at all can swallow these liquid things, if he chooses. But how
often do we hear a mutton-chop, an egg, a bit of bacon, ordered to a
patient for breakfast, to whom (as a moment's consideration would show
us) it must be quite impossible to masticate such things at that hour.
Again, a nurse is ordered to give a patient a tea-cup full of some
article of food every three hours. The patient's stomach rejects it. If
so, try a table-spoon full every hour; if this will not do, a tea-spoon
full every quarter of an hour.
I am bound to say, that I think more patients are lost by want of care
and ingenuity in these momentous minutiae in private nursing than in
public hospitals. And I think there is more of the _entente cordiale_ to
assist one another's hands between the doctor and his head nurse in the
latter institutions, than between the doctor and the patient's friends
in the private house.
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