and fidgetting about while a patient is talking
business to him, or the friend who sits and proses, the one from an idea
of not letting the patient talk, the other from an idea of amusing
him,--each is equally inconsiderate. Always sit down when a sick person
is talking business to you, show no signs of hurry, give complete
attention and full consideration if your advice is wanted, and go away
the moment the subject is ended.

[Sidenote: How to visit the sick and not hurt them.]

Always sit within the patient's view, so that when you speak to him he
has not painfully to turn his head round in order to look at you.
Everybody involuntarily looks at the person speaking. If you make this
act a wearisome one on the part of the patient you are doing him harm.
So also if by continuing to stand you make him continuously raise his
eyes to see you. Be as motionless as possible, and never gesticulate in
speaking to the sick.

Never make a patient repeat a message or request, especially if it be
some time after. Occupied patients are often accused of doing too much
of their own business. They are instinctively right. How often you hear
the person, charged with the request of giving the message or writing
the letter, say half an hour afterwards to the patient, "Did you appoint
12 o'clock?" or, "What did you say was the address?" or ask perhaps some
much more agitating question--thus causing the patient the effort of
memory, or worse still, of decision, all over again. It is really less
exertion to him to write his letters himself. This is the almost
universal experience of occupied invalids.

This brings us to another caution. Never speak to an invalid from
behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he
is doing anything.

The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to
invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but
servants about them.

[Sidenote: These things not fancy.]

These things are not fancy. If we consider that, with sick as with well,
every thought decomposes some nervous matter,--that decomposition as
well as re-composition of nervous matter is always going on, and more
quickly with the sick than with the well,--that, to obtrude abruptly
another thought upon the brain while it is in the act of destroying
nervous matter by thinking, is calling upon it to make a new
exertion,--if we consider these things, which are facts, not fancies, we
shall remembe