“The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe--how to observe--what symptoms indicate improvement--what the reverse--which are of importance--which are of none--which are the evidence of neglect--and of what kind of neglect. All this is what ought to make part, and an essential part, of the training of every nurse.” * * * * * “Courts of justice seem to think that anybody can speak ‘the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ if he does but intend it. It requires many faculties combined of observation and memory to speak ‘the whole truth,’ and to say ‘nothing but the truth.’ “‘I knows I fibs dreadful, but believe me, Miss, I never finds out I has fibbed until they tells me so,’ was a remark actually made. It is also one of much more extended application than most people have the least idea of.” * * * * * “There may be four different causes, any of which will produce the same result, viz., the patient slowly starving to death from want of nutrition: 1. Defect in cooking; 2. Defect in choice of diet; 3. Defect in choice of hours for taking diet; 4. Defect of appetite in patient. Yet all these are generally comprehended in the one sweeping assertion that the patient has ‘no appetite.’” * * * * * “If you cannot get the habit of observation one way or other, you had better give up the being a nurse, for it is not your calling, however kind and anxious you may be.” “It appears that scarcely any improvement in the faculty of observing is being made. Vast has been the increase of knowledge in pathology--that science which teaches us the final change produced by disease on the human frame--scarce any in the art of observing the signs of the change while in progress. Or, rather, is it not to be feared that observation, as an essential part of medicine, has been declining?” “In dwelling upon the vital importance of sound observation, it must never be lost sight of what observation is for. It is not for the sake of piling up miscellaneous information or curious facts, but for the sake of saving life and increasing health and comfort. The caution may seem useless, but it is quite surprising how many men (some women do it too), practically behave as if the scientific end were the only one in view, or as if the sick body were but a reservoir for stowing medicines into, and the surgical disease only a curious case the sufferer has made for the attendant’s special information.” * * * * * “Pathology teaches the harm that disease has done. But it teaches nothing more. We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. And nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health.” * * * * *