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, 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.]