When feeding the patient, do it gently and neatly. Anticipate his wants, and let the food be a surprise as far as practicable. In severe sickness give nourishment in a small quantity often, and never fail to give it immediately after a long sleep. During convalescence food should be given at longer, but regular intervals. If the patient be unable to use a toothbrush, wet a bit of soft cloth and wipe the teeth and gums, and give a little water or acid drink to soften the dry mucous membrane and destroy the bad taste in the mouth, before offering any food.

Let everything prepared for the invalid be arranged to please the eye as well as the palate. Serve less than you think the patient requires, and give as much variety as possible, serving in different forms or in different dishes if the material must be the same. Hot liquids should be hot when they reach the patient, not merely when they leave the kitchen. Serve them in a hot pitcher, and pour only a little into the hot cup or bowl, and so avoid its running over into the saucer or too rapid cooling. Never insult the patient by offering him a slice of dough covered with charcoal, under the name of toast. When the meal is over, remove immediately every trace of food from the room. Keep in the sick-room choice fruit or any delicacies which have been sent to the patient only long enough to gratify the eye, then remove to a cool place, and serve as fresh and daintily as possible.

Wines or liquors of any kind should never be given without the advice of a physician. Young persons do not need them, and, in any form of fever, stimulants are positively harmful. In some extreme cases, among very old people, or where there is a great lack of recuperative power, they may be given.

Visitors

Visitors should never be admitted to a sickroom, except with the consent of the physician. Never visit a sick-room when in a violent perspiration or with an empty stomach, as then the system more readily receives contagion. If obliged to sit up all night with a patient, provide yourself with something to eat, if nothing more than a cake of chocolate, that there may be no needless exhaustion.

Not the least of the many qualifications desirable in a good nurse is a thorough knowledge of the nature, use, and digestibility, as well as the best methods of preparing different kinds of food, and of their adaptation to different forms of disease. Such knowledge is of still greater importance to every physician, and fully as essential as the study of drugs. Nurses, alas! are often wholly unqualified, or not to be obtained at all; and then that patient is fortunate, indeed, who has a physician who can in emergency fill the treble office of nurse, cook, and doctor.