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 she has failed in getting it, he will suffer.  She must be always exercising her ingenuity to supply defects, and to remedy accidents which will happen among the best contrivers, but from which the patient does not suffer the less, because “they cannot be helped.”

[Sidenote:  Keep your patient’s cup dry underneath.]

One very minute caution,—­take care not to spill into your patient’s saucer, in other words, take care that the outside bottom rim of his cup shall be quite dry and clean; if, every time he lifts his cup to his lips, he has to carry the saucer with it, or else to drop the liquid upon, and to soil his sheet, or his bed-gown, or pillow, or if he is sitting up, his dress, you have no idea what a difference this minute want of care on your part makes to his comfort and even to his willingness for food.

FOOTNOTE:  [1] [Sidenote:  Nurse must have some rule of time about the patient’s diet.]

Why, because the nurse has not got some food to-day which the patient takes, can the patient wait four hours for food to-day, who could not wait two hours yesterday?  Yet this is the only logic one generally hears.  On the other hand, the other logic, viz., of the nurse giving a patient a thing because she has got it, is equally fatal.  If she happens to have fresh jelly, or fresh fruit, she will frequently give it to the patient half an hour after his dinner, or at his dinner, when he cannot possibly eat that and the broth too—­or worse still, leave it by his bed-side till he is so sickened with the sight of it, that he cannot eat it at all.

VII.  WHAT FOOD?

[Sidenote:  Common errors in diet.]

[Sidenote:  Beef tea.]

[Sidenote:  Eggs.]

[Sidenote:  Meat without vegetables.]

[Sidenote:  Arrowroot.]

I will mention one or two of the most common errors among women in charge of sick respecting sick diet.  One is the belief that beef tea is the most nutritive of all articles.  Now, just try and boil down a lb. of beef into beef tea, evaporate your beef tea, and see what is left of your beef.  You will find that there is barely a teaspoonful of solid nourishment to half a pint of water in beef tea;—­nevertheless there is a certain reparative quality in it, we do not know what, as there is in tea;—­but it may safely be given in almost any inflammatory disease, and is as little to be depended upon with the healthy