Courts of justice seem to think that any body can speak “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” if he does but intend it.  It requires many faculties combined of observation and memory to speak “the whole truth” and to say “nothing but the truth.”

“I knows I fibs dreadful:  but believe me, Miss, I never finds out I have fibbed until they tells me so,” was a remark actually made.  It is also one of much more extended application than most people have the least idea of.

Concurrence of testimony, which is so often adduced as final proof, may prove nothing more, as is well known to those accustomed to deal with the unobservant imaginative, than that one person has told his story a great many times.

I have heard thirteen persons “concur” in declaring that a fourteenth, who had never left his bed, went to a distant chapel every morning at seven o’clock.

I have heard persons in perfect good faith declare, that a man came to dine every day at the house where they lived, who had never dined there once; that a person had never taken the sacrament, by whose side they had twice at least knelt at Communion; that but one meal a day came out of a hospital kitchen, which for six weeks they had seen provide from three to five and six meals a day.  Such instances might be multiplied ad infinitum if necessary.

[34] This is important, because on this depends what the remedy will be.  If a patient sleeps two or three hours early in the night, and then does not sleep again at all, ten to one it is not a narcotic he wants, but food or stimulus, or perhaps only warmth.  If on the other hand, he is restless and awake all night, and is drowsy in the morning, he probably wants sedatives, either quiet, coolness, or medicine, a lighter diet, or all four.  Now the doctor should be told this, or how can he judge what to give?

[35]

[Sidenote:  More important to spare the patient thought than physical exertion.]

It is commonly supposed that the nurse is there to spare the patient from making physical exertion for himself—­I would rather say that she ought to be there to spare him from taking thought for himself.  And I am quite sure, that if the patient were spared all thought for himself, and not spared all physical exertion, he would be infinitely the gainer.  The reverse is generally the case in the private house.  In the hospital it is the relief from all anxiety, afforded by the rules of a well-regulated institution, which has often such a beneficial effect upon the patient.

[36]

[Sidenote:  English women have great capacity of but little practice in close observation.]