he
adaptable man or woman recognizes the real as fact, desirable or
otherwise, the fantastic as unreal and only to be indulged in as a
pastime, and the ideal as the possible, a thing for which to work and
sacrifice. So perfect adaptability would mean perfect mental poise.

It is for the nurse to realize that the greater number of her patients
do not belong to any of these classes absolutely, but that some of them
have tendencies leading in these various directions. And it is her
privilege to recognize the trend of her sick patient's mental workings,
and to so deftly and unobtrusively encourage the recognition of facts as
things which are to be used--not as stumbling-blocks--that her mental
nursing, as her physical, shall be directed toward health. She can
help her patient to accept illness and suffering as realities to be
faced, and treatment as a means, whether pleasant or not, of making it
possible for health to replace them. The understanding nurse can
actively help her charge one step at a time toward adaptation to the new
environment, remembering that many of the sick, particularly the
depressed, cannot be encouraged or incited to effort by having future
health held out to them. They are capable only of living in the present
and doubting all the future.

_There Can Be No Neurosis Without a Psychosis._--If the brain is the
organ of the mind, then what affects the brain must perforce be at
least registered by mind. So every physical shock, accident, toxic
condition, infection--even the ordinary cold--rouses the mind at least
to awareness, usually to discomfort. For the nerve-cells and
fibers--those inseparable parts of the body mechanism--speedily report
the fact that they are being tampered with. In the toxicity of the
infections these very delicate tissues are nourished by toxic fluids;
in accidents they carry all the messages from the injured part. Then
the brain--that center of all man's reactions and the organ of all his
consciousness--receives the report of the disturbance and translates
it into terms of more or less disability. The neurosis has become a
psychosis. The physical condition has become a mental discomfort.
Normally this ensuing mind state should be in accordance with the
extent of the injury to the nerve-cells and fibers. But under
long-continued discipline, or influenced by emotion, the conscious
mind may not recognize the neurosis; whereas, in the hypersuggestible,
consciousness will translate