“The very first canon of nursing, the first and the last thing upon which a nurse’s attention must be fixed, the first essential to a patient, without which all the rest you can do for him is as nothing, with which I had almost said you may leave all the rest alone, is this: To keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him.” * * * * * “The time when people take cold (and there are many ways of taking cold, besides a cold in the nose), is when they first get up after the two-fold exhaustion of dressing and of having had the skin relaxed by many hours, perhaps days, in bed, and thereby rendered more incapable of reaction. Then the same temperature which refreshes the patient in bed may destroy the patient just risen. And common sense will point out, that, while purity of air is essential, a temperature must be secured which shall not chill the patient.” “Of all methods of keeping patients warm the very worst certainly is to depend for heat on the breath and bodies of the sick.” * * * * * “To be ‘in charge’ is certainly not only to carry out the proper measures yourself, but to see that every one else does so too; to see that no one either wilfully or ignorantly thwarts or prevents such measures. It is neither to do everything yourself nor to appoint a number of people to each duty, but to ensure that each does that duty to which he is appointed.” * * * * * “Conciseness and decision are, above all things, necessary with the sick. Let your thought expressed to them be concisely and decidedly expressed. What doubt and hesitation there may be in your own mind must never be communicated to theirs.” * * * * * “‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ is the very worst and most dangerous maxim for a nurse which ever was made. Patience and resignation in her are but other words for carelessness or indifference--contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable, if in regard to her sick.” * * * * * “I would appeal most seriously to all friends, visitors, and attendants of the sick to leave off this practice of attempting to ‘cheer’ the sick by making light of their danger and by exaggerating their probabilities of recovery.” * * * * * “A sick person intensely enjoys hearing of any material good, any positive or practical success of the right. He has so much of books and fiction, of principles, and precepts, and theories; do, instead of advising him with advice he has heard at least fifty times before, tell him of one benevolent act which has really succeeded practically,--it is like a day’s health to him. You have no idea what the craving of sick with undiminished power of thinking, but little power of doing, is to hear of good practical action, when they can no longer partake in it.” * * * * *