aps only warmth. If, on the other hand, he is
restless and awake all night, and is drowsy in the morning, he probably
wants sedatives, either quiet, coolness, or medicine, a lighter diet, or
all four. Now the doctor should be told this, or how can he judge what
to give?

[3]
[Sidenote: More important to spare the patient thought than physical
exertion.]

It is commonly supposed that the nurse is there to spare the
patient from making physical exertion for himself--I would rather
say that she ought to be there to spare him from taking thought
for himself. And I am quite sure, that if the patient were spared
all thought for himself, and _not_ spared all physical exertion, he
would be infinitely the gainer. The reverse is generally the case
in the private house. In the hospital it is the relief from all
anxiety, afforded by the rules of a well-regulated institution,
which has often such a beneficial effect upon the patient.

[4]
[Sidenote: English women have great capacity of, but little practice in
close observation.]

It may be too broad an assertion, and it certainly sounds like a
paradox. But I think that in no country are women to be found so
deficient in ready and sound observation as in England, while peculiarly
capable of being trained to it. The French or Irish woman is too quick
of perception to be so sound an observer--the Teuton is too slow to be
so ready an observer as the English woman might be. Yet English women
lay themselves open to the charge so often made against them by men,
viz., that they are not to be trusted in handicrafts to which their
strength is quite equal, for want of a practised and steady observation.
In countries where women (with average intelligence certainly not
superior to that of English women) are employed, e.g., in dispensing,
men responsible for what these women do (not theorizing about man's and
woman's "missions,") have stated that they preferred the service of
women to that of men, as being more exact, more careful, and incurring
fewer mistakes of inadvertence.

Now certainly English women are peculiarly capable of attaining to this.

I remember when a child, hearing the story of an accident, related by
some one who sent two girls to fetch a "bottle of salvolatile from her
room;" "Mary could not stir," she said, "Fanny ran and fetched a bottle
that was not salvolatile, and that was not in my room."

Now this sort of thing pursues every one through life. A woman is ask