To sum up:--the answer to two of the commonest objections urged, one by women themselves, the other by men, against the desirableness of sanitary knowledge for women, _plus_ a caution, comprises the whole argument for the art of nursing. [Sidenote: Reckless amateur physicking by women. Real knowledge of the laws of health alone can check this.] (1.) It is often said by men, that it is unwise to teach women anything about these laws of health, because they will take to physicking,--that there is a great deal too much of amateur physicking as it is, which is indeed true. One eminent physician told me that he had known more calomel given, both at a pinch and for a continuance, by mothers, governesses, and nurses, to children than he had ever heard of a physician prescribing in all his experience. Another says, that women's only idea in medicine is calomel and aperients. This is undeniably too often the case. There is nothing ever seen in any professional practice like the reckless physicking by amateur females.[1] But this is just what the really experienced and observing nurse does _not_ do; she neither physics herself nor others. And to cultivate in things pertaining to health observation and experience in women who are mothers, governesses or nurses, is just the way to do away with amateur physicking, and if the doctors did but know it, to make the nurses obedient to them,--helps to them instead of hindrances. Such education in women would indeed diminish the doctor's work--but no one really believes that doctors wish that there should be more illness, in order to have more work. [Sidenote: What pathology teaches. What observation alone teaches. What medicine does. What nature alone does.] (2.) It is often said by women, that they cannot know anything of the laws of health, or what to do to preserve their children's health, because they can know nothing of "Pathology," or cannot "dissect,"--a confusion of ideas which it is hard to attempt to disentangle.