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Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1920

"Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not"

" Sure also are these advisers to
be the persons to bring the sick man fresh occupation, while exhorting
him to leave his own.
[Sidenote: Wonderful presumption of the advisers of the sick.]
Wonderful is the face with which friends, lay and medical, will come in
and worry the patient with recommendations to do something or other,
having just as little knowledge as to its being feasible, or even safe
for him, as if they were to recommend a man to take exercise, not
knowing he had broken his leg. What would the friend say, if _he_ were
the medical attendant, and if the patient, because some _other_ friend
had come in, because somebody, anybody, nobody, had recommended
something, anything, nothing, were to disregard _his_ orders, and take
that other body's recommendation? But people never think of this.
[Sidenote: Advisers the same now as two hundred years ago.]
A celebrated historical personage has related the commonplaces which,
when on the eve of executing a remarkable resolution, were showered in
nearly the same words by every one around successively for a period of
six months.


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