r meals, go far to counterbalance what
unavoidable evil there is in having patients together. I have often seen
the private nurse go on dusting or fidgeting about in a sick room all
the while the patient is eating, or trying to eat.

That the more alone an invalid can be when taking food, the better, is
unquestionable; and, even if he must be fed, the nurse should not allow
him to talk, or talk to him, especially about food, while eating.

When a person is compelled, by the pressure of occupation, to continue
his business while sick, it ought to be a rule WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTION
WHATEVER, that no one shall bring business to him or talk to him while
he is taking food, nor go on talking to him on interesting subjects up
to the last moment before his meals, nor make an engagement with him
immediately after, so that there be any hurry of mind while taking them.

Upon the observance of these rules, especially the first, often depends
the patient's capability of taking food at all, or, if he is amiable and
forces himself to take food, of deriving any nourishment from it.

[Sidenote: You cannot be too careful as to quality in sick diet.]

A nurse should never put before a patient milk that is sour, meat or
soup that is turned, an egg that is bad, or vegetables underdone. Yet
often I have seen these things brought in to the sick in a state
perfectly perceptible to every nose or eye except the nurse's. It is
here that the clever nurse appears; she will not bring in the peccant
article, but, not to disappoint the patient, she will whip up something
else in a few minutes. Remember that sick cookery should half do the
work of your poor patient's weak digestion. But if you further impair it
with your bad articles, I know not what is to become of him or of it.

If the nurse is an intelligent being, and not a mere carrier of diets to
and from the patient, let her exercise her intelligence in these things.
How often we have known a patient eat nothing at all in the day, because
one meal was left untasted (at that time he was incapable of eating), at
another the milk was sour, the third was spoiled by some other accident.
And it never occurred to the nurse to extemporize some expedient,--it
never occurred to her that as he had had no solid food that day, he
might eat a bit of toast (say) with his tea in the evening, or he might
have some meal an hour earlier. A patient who cannot touch his dinner at
two, will often accept it gladly, i