member. If
we would help ourselves or our patients whose memories are faulty, and
who make them worse by their continual fretting over their disability,
we must train ourselves to be willing to forget all that does not in the
least concern our interests or those of the people about us, and does
not add anything desirable to our knowledge. Thus we may avoid
overcrowding the mind. But when we would remember let us give our whole
active attention at the moment of presentation of the new stimulus, and
immediately tie it up with something in past experience; let us
recognize what it is that we should remember, and call the reinforcement
of will, which demands that we remember whether we want to or not.
Sincere desire to remember will inspire early and frequent recalling,
with various associations, or hooks, until the impression becomes
permanent. The average patient's poor memory is made worse by his
agitation and attention to it, and his conviction that he cannot
remember. The fear of forgetting often wastes mental energy which might
otherwise provide keenness of memory. If the nurse ties up some pleasant
association with the things she wants the sick man to remember, and
disregards his painful effort to recall other things, then--unless the
mind is disordered--he will often find normal memory reasserting itself.

We shall consider this question of memory in more detail in a later
chapter of practical suggestions for the nurse.

THE PLACE OF EMOTION

_Feeling Cannot Be Separated from Thinking._--Emotion we found the
constant accompaniment of every other mental activity. It is first on
the stage of consciousness and, in the normal mind, last to withdraw.

When I am working at a problem in doses or solutions, trying to learn my
_materia medica_, or wrestling with the causes of disease in my
_medical nursing_, or thinking how I can eke out my last ten dollars
till I get some more, I am pursued with some vague or well-defined
feeling of annoyance or satisfaction, of displeasure or pleasure. If all
goes well, the latter; if not, the former.

_Feeling Cannot Be Separated from Will._--I cannot _will_ without a
feeling accompaniment, pleasant or unpleasant. I may be using my will
only in carrying out what intellect advises. But we found that
intellect's operations are always affective, _i. e._, have some feeling
of pleasure or pain. And the very act of will itself is a pleasant one
and much easier if it is making me do what