ation in this almost neglected branch of
nursing, or the help it would give to the medical man.

[Sidenote: Tea and coffee.]

A great deal too much against tea[2] is said by wise people, and a great
deal too much of tea is given to the sick by foolish people. When you
see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their
"tea," you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. But a
little tea or coffee restores them quite as much as a great deal, and a
great deal of tea and especially of coffee impairs the little power of
digestion they have. Yet a nurse, because she sees how one or two cups
of tea or coffee restores her patient, thinks that three or four cups
will do twice as much. This is not the case at all; it is however
certain that there is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to
the English patient for his cup of tea; he can take it when he can take
nothing else, and he often can't take anything else if he has it not. I
should be very glad if any of the abusers of tea would point out what to
give to an English patient after a sleepless night, instead of tea. If
you give it at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, he may even sometimes fall
asleep after it, and get perhaps his only two or three hours' sleep
during the twenty-four. At the same time you never should give tea or
coffee to the sick, as a rule, after 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
Sleeplessness in the early night is from excitement generally and is
increased by tea or coffee; sleeplessness which continues to the early
morning is from exhaustion often, and is relieved by tea. The only
English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases,
and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for
tea. In general, the dry and dirty tongue always prefers tea to coffee,
and will quite decline milk, unless with tea. Coffee is a better
restorative than tea, but a greater impairer of the digestion. Let the
patient's taste decide. You will say that, in cases of great thirst, the
patient's craving decides that it will drink _a great deal_ of tea, and
that you cannot help it. But in these cases be sure that the patient
requires diluents for quite other purposes than quenching the thirst; he
wants a great deal of some drink, not only of tea, and the doctor will
order what he is to have, barley water or lemonade, or soda water and
milk, as the case may be.

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