I have heard a doctor condemned whose patient did not, alas! recover, because another doctor’s patient of a different sex, of a different age, recovered from a different disease, in a different place.  Yes, this is really true.  If people who make these comparisons did but know (only they do not care to know), the care and preciseness with which such comparisons require to be made, (and are made,) in order to be of any value whatever, they would spare their tongues.  In comparing the deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes, and the diseases of all the cases.  It does not seem necessary to mention this.  It does not seem necessary to say that there can be no comparison between old men with dropsies and young women with consumptions.  Yet the cleverest men and the cleverest women are often heard making such comparisons, ignoring entirely sex, age, disease, place—­in fact, all the conditions essential to the question.  It is the merest gossip.

[2] A small pet animal is often an excellent companion for the sick, for long chronic cases especially.  A pet bird in a cage is sometimes the only pleasure of an invalid confined for years to the same room.  If he can feed and clean the animal himself, he ought always to be encouraged to do so.

XIII.  OBSERVATION OF THE SICK.

[Sidenote:  What is the use of the question, Is he better?]

There is no more silly or universal question scarcely asked than this, “Is he better?” Ask it of the medical attendant, if you please.  But of whom else, if you wish for a real answer to your question, would you ask?  Certainly not of the casual visitor; certainly not of the nurse, while the nurse’s observation is so little exercised as it is now.  What you want are facts, not opinions—­for who can have any opinion of any value as to whether the patient is better or worse, excepting the constant medical attendant, or the really observing nurse?

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe—­how to observe—­what symptoms indicate improvement—­what the reverse—­which are of importance—­which are of none—­which are the evidence of neglect—­and of what kind of neglect.

All this is what ought to make part, and an essential part, of the training of every nurse.  At present how few there are, either professional or unprofessional, who really know at all whether any sick person they may be with is better or worse.

The vagueness and looseness of the information one receives in answer to that much abused question, “Is he better?” would be ludicrous, if it were not painful.  The only sensible answer (in the present state of knowledge about sickness) would be “How can I know?  I cannot tell how he was when I was not with him.”