]
Fortunate it is if her skirts do not catch fire--and if the nurse does
not give herself up a sacrifice together with her patient, to be burnt
in her own petticoats. I wish the Registrar-General would tell us the
exact number of deaths by burning occasioned by this absurd and hideous
custom. But if people will be stupid, let them take measures to protect
themselves from their own stupidity--measures which every chemist knows,
such as putting alum into starch, which prevents starched articles of
dress from blazing up.
[Sidenote: Indecency of the crinolines.]
I wish too that people who wear crinoline could see the indecency of
their own dress as other people see it. A respectable elderly woman
stooping forward, invested in crinoline, exposes quite as much of her
own person to the patient lying in the room as any opera-dancer does on
the stage. But no one will ever tell her this unpleasant truth.
[16]
[Sidenote: Never speak to a patient in the act of moving.]
It is absolutely essential that a nurse should lay this down as a
positive rule to herself, never to speak to any patient who is standing
or moving, as long as she exercises so little observation as not to know
when a patient cannot bear it.
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