A lady nursing a friend in small-pox, after lengthened attendance in the sick-room, was attacked by faintness, shivering, a sensation of nausea, and violent headache. Both the nurse and her friends concluded that a seizure of the loathsome disease from which the patient was suffering was inevitable. However, the following day several large blotches appeared on various parts of the body; all unpleasant symptoms gradually disappeared; and in a day or two--without the original sufferer having had any idea that her nurse was kept away by anything more serious than need of rest--she was able to return to her duties, and never suffered any further deterioration of health. In the same way we have known those who were nursing cases of fever to be suddenly attacked by sore throat, headache, and vertigo, these symptoms passing off after twenty-four or forty-eight hours, and no further evil resulting. A vigorous constitution, care while nurse-tending as to diet and exercise, joined to a mind calm and equable, and ready to face all possibilities without flurry, feverish excitement, or fear, will in many cases enable the sick-nurse to throw off the seeds of disease. But a malignant influence which floats in the atmosphere of the sick-room, pervading the breath of the sick person, and hanging like a bad odour about the bed-clothes, carpets, and even the wall-paper of the room, is necessarily a difficult enemy to evade--and such is infection. And any one who has a timorous dread of it is far better away from the sick-room. This is, we think, a matter that cannot be too strongly insisted upon. To watch for symptoms is often to develop them; and constant dwelling upon the condition of any one organ of the body, and apprehension as to disease in that organ, will often produce at all events functional derangement if no greater evil. By this we do not mean that neglect of one's self is ever justifiable, but only that fearful and timorous apprehension is deleterious. So strongly has this fact impressed itself upon us with regard to infection, that we even think it would be well to strain a point, and encourage a person to absent herself from the sick-room, rather than run the risk of having a nurse of this temperament near a patient suffering from disease of a catching nature. In sickness the perceptions are often rendered painfully acute, and the mind naturally much concentrated on itself, is therefore ready to take offence or be troubled by trifles. We have seen a patient shrink from the ministrations of a person whom he _felt_ to be in a state of fear.