remember better by jotting them down in
order of the beds, with names and a brief comment on each patient. Keep
that list on a small card in your pocket for reference for a day or two,
then depend on memory entirely. I have personally found this an
excellent method.

You are expected to be able to turn quickly to any medicines needed in
emergency, and you soon learn to remember them and where they are placed
by the arrangement into classes or kinds, which most hospitals require.
Cathartics are together, hypnotics together, etc. So when you want
_cascara_ you associate it with cathartic and turn to that shelf. You
learn very soon that poison medicines are kept apart from the others,
and quickly associate the _poison_ label with danger to patients,
necessity of locking safely away and hiding the key from any but those
responsible for the care of the sick.

Learning to look closely at the patient's face, instead of casually
glancing at her when you care for her, makes it possible for you to note
changes of expression, heightened color, dilated pupils, a trace of
strain, etc. Then try to find the exact word that will express what you
see. Such experiments in perception and attention, association and
memory, repeatedly demanded of yourself--_i. e._, the being able to
recall and describe in detail the room- or ward-arrangements and to
place the patients accurately, as we have just described--will prove
invaluable practice, helping you to attend to every change in your
patient's demeanor and expression, which may prove significant symptoms.
And remember that while the mind can only contain so many isolated
facts, yet there is no limit to its possibilities when the power of
association of ideas is employed.

Your first step to clear thinking is accuracy of perception, with
attention to the thing reason chooses; your second is association of the
things perceived, a grouping of them to fit in with each other, and with
what is already in the mind. And both imply the third--concentration,
aided by emotion and will. For passive attention and haphazard
associations assure the opposite of clear thinking.

CONCENTRATION

_How to Study._--You learn sooner or later from experience that the
quickest and best way to learn anything new is to give it your undivided
attention at the moment; to perceive one thing at a time and to perceive
it as something that is definite, or as some quality that is unblurred.
One of you will spend thr