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, if brought to him at seven. But somehow
nurses never "think of these things." One would imagine they did not
consider themselves bound to exercise their judgment; they leave it to
the patient. Now I am quite sure that it is better for a patient rather
to suffer these neglects than to try to teach his nurse to nurse him, if
she does not know how. It ruffles him, and if he is ill he is in no
condition to teach, especially upon himself. The above remarks apply
much more to private nursing than to hospitals.

[Sidenote: Nurse must have some rule of thought about her patient's
diet.]

I would say to the nurse, have a rule of thought about your patient's
diet; consider, remember how much he has had, and how much he ought to
have to-day. Generally, the only rule of the private patient's diet is
what the nurse has to give. It is true she cannot give him what she has
not got; but his stomach does not wait for her convenience, or even her
necessity.[1] If it is used to having its stimulus at one hour to-day,
and to-morrow it does not have it, because