I am an undisciplined child and I want only candy for my lunch. It is not good for me. Milk is what I should have. I don't want it. You may deprive me of the candy and force me to drink the milk, and I can do nothing but submit. But I rebel within, and I am only more convinced that I "hate" it and want candy, and that you are my natural enemy because you force the one upon me and deprive me of the other. If I were insane and so, of course, could not be reasoned with, this might be inevitable. But it would be unfortunate. In that case, if possible, do not let me see the candy; let only the food it is best for me to have be put before me, and perhaps eventually I shall come to want the more wholesome thing--for it is better than the hunger. But as it happens I am a perfectly normal person, only I am sick. I am tired of bed, and want to sit up--and it does seem that I should have my desire. The nurse, wise in her knowledge of sick "grown-ups," who are, after all, very like children, will find a way to divert my mind from the immediate "I want" to something which I also can be led to want. I may agree that I want more the better feeling an hour from now. Perhaps her humorous picture of the effects of too early freedom on my condition, or of my body's urgent demand for rest, regardless of my mind's wish; perhaps only a joke which diverts me; perchance the "take-for-granted you want to help us out" air; mayhap the story to be read or told; or simply the poise and quiet assurance of the nurse who never questions my reasonableness and acquiescence; perhaps her confidence that this will serve as a means to the end I covet--will result in my gladly taking her advice, and my perfect willingness to wait for new orders, while I indulge in beautiful plans I shall carry out when they finally arrive. In other words, with the sick as with children, attention naturally follows interest. And the good nurse realizes that it is not wise to force co-operation when she can secure it by diverting her patient's thoughts to another interest than the one now holding him. Very often, merely by chatting quietly about something she has learned has an appeal, she can make the patient forget his weariness and boredom, or his resistance to details of treatment. The very milk he is refusing to drink may be down before he realizes it. But right here lies a hidden reef which may cause wreckage in the future. It is good therapy to divert attention by appealing to another interest when the patient is too sick or too stubborn or not clear enough mentally to be reasoned with. But if this becomes a principle, and his reason and active co-operation are never secured to make him choose the way of health for himself, the hour he is out of the nurse's hands he reverts to the things that now happen to appeal to him. Then unless some wise friend is near to continue her method of making the reasonable interesting, the advice of reason can "go to smash."