The nurse’s responsibility is great; she has many duties to perform, some of them apparently slight, yet really of vital importance; but at the same time, she is only acting under orders, and when those orders have been faithfully carried out, her responsibility ends; it therefore follows, that whatever her private opinion, she must never alter the treatment without the doctor’s express permission, and whatever she may think, she should never, by word or deed, seek to lessen the patient’s confidence in the patient’s doctor. It sometimes happens that injudicious friends suggest remedies of their own, and insist upon their being used; any such interference should be at once reported to the doctor, for how else can he form a right opinion as to the patient’s condition? Yet so often is this overlooked, that, I believe, in many home-nursed cases the doctor’s treatment is never allowed fair-play; and I have even known a prescription, that had been torn up by the doctor as unsuitable, carefully pieced together after his departure, and used. Perhaps in no other point is there such a marked difference between the trained and untrained nurse. The former has been taught that her power lies in obedience; the latter, ignorant of her very ignorance, ventures to meddle in matters which, had she but a little more knowledge, she would understand to be beyond her. Not a little of the nurse’s value depends on her ability to give the doctor a proper report of how matters have been going during his absence. A patient will often pull himself together and even feign convalescence for the doctor’s visit, which is necessarily brief; whilst the nurse, spending hours with him, sees every varying mood and symptom; at the same time, she must remember that the doctor does not want her opinion, but asks only _facts_, which will enable him to draw his own conclusions. From this it will be seen that the nurse needs to understand what to notice and how to report her observations.