It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to manage, as it is to teach her how to nurse.  Circumstances must vary with each different case.  But it is possible to press upon her to think for herself:  Now what does happen during my absence?  I am obliged to be away on Tuesday.  But fresh air, or punctuality is not less important to my patient on Tuesday than it was on Monday.  Or:  At 10 P.M.  I am never with my patient; but quiet is of no less consequence to him at 10 than it was at 5 minutes to 10.

Curious as it may seem, this very obvious consideration occurs comparatively to few, or, if it does occur, it is only to cause the devoted friend or nurse to be absent fewer hours or fewer minutes from her patient—­not to arrange so as that no minute and no hour shall be for her patient without the essentials of her nursing.

[Sidenote:  Illustrations of the want of it.]

A very few instances will be sufficient, not as precepts, but as illustrations.

[Sidenote:  Strangers coming into the sick room.]

A strange washerwoman, coming late at night for the “things,” will burst in by mistake to the patient’s sick-room, after he has fallen into his first doze, giving him a shock, the effects of which are irremediable, though he himself laughs at the cause, and probably never even mentions it.  The nurse who is, and is quite right to be, at her supper, has not provided that the washerwoman shall not lose her way and go into the wrong room.

[Sidenote:  Sick room airing the whole house.]

The patient’s room may always have the window open.  But the passage outside the patient’s room, though provided with several large windows, may never have one open.  Because it is not understood that the charge of the sick-room extends to the charge of the passage.  And thus, as often happens, the nurse makes it her business to turn the patient’s room into a ventilating shaft for the foul air of the whole house.

[Sidenote:  Uninhabited room fouling the whole house.]

An uninhabited room, a newly painted room,[11] an uncleaned closet or cupboard, may often become a reservoir of foul air for the whole house, because the person in charge never thinks of arranging that these places shall be always aired, always cleaned; she merely opens the window herself “when she goes in.”

[Sidenote:  Delivery and non-delivery of letters and messages.]

An agitating letter or message may be delivered, or an important letter or message not delivered; a visitor whom it was of consequence to see, may be refused, or one whom it was of still more consequence not to see may be admitted—­because the person in charge has never asked herself this question, What is done when I am not there?[12]

At all events, one may safely say, a nurse cannot be with the patient, open the door, eat her meals, take a message, all at one and the same time.  Nevertheless the person in charge never seems to look the impossibility in the face.