[Sidenote:  Irresolution most painful to them.]

Irresolution is what all patients most dread.  Rather than meet this in others, they will collect all their data, and make up their minds for themselves.  A change of mind in others, whether it is regarding an operation, or re-writing a letter, always injures the patient more than the being called upon to make up his mind to the most dreaded or difficult decision.  Farther than this, in very many cases, the imagination in disease is far more active and vivid than it is in health.  If you propose to the patient change of air to one place one hour, and to another the next, he has, in each case, immediately constituted himself in imagination the tenant of the place, gone over the whole premises in idea, and you have tired him as much by displacing his imagination, as if you had actually carried him over both places.

Above all, leave the sick room quickly and come into it quickly, not suddenly, not with a rush.  But don’t let the patient be wearily waiting for when you will be out of the room or when you will be in it.  Conciseness and decision in your movements, as well as your words, are necessary in the sick room, as necessary as absence of hurry and bustle.  To possess yourself entirely will ensure you from either failing—­either loitering or hurrying.

[Sidenote:  What a patient must not have to see to.]

If a patient has to see, not only to his own but also to his nurse’s punctuality, or perseverance, or readiness, or calmness, to any or all of these things, he is far better without that nurse than with her—­ however valuable and handy her services may otherwise be to him, and however incapable he may be of rendering them to himself.

[Sidenote:  Reading aloud.]

With regard to reading aloud in the sick room, my experience is, that when the sick are too ill to read to themselves, they can seldom bear to be read to.  Children, eye-patients, and uneducated persons are exceptions, or where there is any mechanical difficulty in reading.  People who like to be read to, have generally not much the matter with them; while in fevers, or where there is much irritability of brain, the effort of listening to reading aloud has often brought on delirium.  I speak with great diffidence; because there is an almost universal impression that it is sparing the sick to read aloud to them.  But two things are certain:—­

[Sidenote:  Read aloud slowly, distinctly, and steadily to the sick.]

(1.) If there is some matter which must be read to a sick person, do it slowly.  People often think that the way to get it over with least fatigue to him is to get it over in least time.  They gabble; they plunge and gallop through the reading.  There never was a greater mistake.  Houdin, the conjuror, says that the way to make a story seem short is to tell it slowly.  So it is with reading to the sick.  I have often heard a patient say to such a mistaken