Life in the sick-room : $b EssaysMartineau, Harriet
Science
Life in the sick-room : $b Essays
Martineau, Harriet
Conduct of life; Sick
As to the remedy, it is easy to say that it is to be found in a cheerful
trust in the Ordainer of our lot. While no one questions this, who can
show how this trust is to be made available at every need, when the
workings of the spirit are all confused, its vision impaired, and its
powers distorted? The only advice that even experience can give in such
an instance, is to revive healthy old associations, to occupy the morbid
powers with objects from without, and to use the happiest rather than
the lowest seasons for leading the mind to a consideration of its
highest relations. As the case is opposite to that most commonly
discoursed of in connexion with the sick-room, so must a wise
ministration be also opposite to common notions; the appeal must be, in
seasons of ease and enjoyment, to the sense of dependence on God; and,
in times of mental distress, to the principles of endurance and
self-mastery.
Other tempers of the sick-room are more easily understood by those
without. The particularity about trifles is one. This, though often
reaching a point of absurdity, should be scrupulously indulged, because
no one but the sufferer can be fully aware of the annoyance of want of
order in so confined a space and range of objects. A healthy person, who
can go everywhere at pleasure, leaving litters to be put away by
servants during absence, can have no idea of the oppression felt by a
feeble invalid, when looking round upon the confusion left in one little
room by careless visitors,--chairs standing in all directions, books
thrown down here and there, and work or papers strewed on the floor. It
is easy to laugh at such trifles--easy to the invalid himself at times;
but if any healthy person will recal his feelings during convalescence
from any former illness, he will remember the sort of painful sympathy
with which he saw the servants going about their work--how his frame
ached at hearing of a long walk, or even at seeing his friends sitting
upright upon chairs. If he considers what it must be to have this set of
feelings for life, he will think the particularity of the invalid not
only worth indulging, but less absurd than in the eye of reason it
appears; and if it be too much to expect of men, it may be hoped that
women visiting the sick may be careful to leave the spaces of the room
clear, not to shake the sofa or the table, to put up books upon their
shelves, and leave all in such a state that the invalid may, immediately
on being left alone, sink down to such rest as can be found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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