The Queen of Nurses combats the frequently accepted idea that cut flowers and growing plants are unhealthy in a sick-room, even at night. “The carbonic acid they give off at nights,” she writes, “would not poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded rooms they actually absorb carbonic acid and give off oxygen. Cut flowers also decompose water and produce oxygen gas.” The nurse should observe what colours are most pleasing to her patient. “Some sick persons feel stimulus from looking at scarlet flowers, others exhaustion from looking at deep blue.” This reminds me of an incident which occurred while the present writer was going over Netley Hospital when it was filled with wounded from the battlefields of South Africa. The convalescent soldiers were doing fancy woolwork, and a sister came into a ward bearing a parcel of wool sent by a benevolent lady. When opened, the wool was found to be all in khaki colour. The men turned their heads in disgust. “Didn’t we see enough of khaki in South Africa, sister?” they exclaimed. “Why don’t these kind ladies send us bright colours which will drive the thought of khaki out of our minds.” A moment’s intelligent reflection on the colours most likely to please the brave fellows at Netley would have prevented such a foolish mistake. Miss Nightingale’s words of wisdom, written forty years ago, are not obsolete yet. The subject of “Taking Food” is next dealt with, and Miss Nightingale vigorously attacks the accepted traditions. It is a common error “that beef tea is the most nutritious of all articles. Now just try and boil down a pound of beef into beef tea, evaporate your beef tea, and see what is left of your beef--barely a tablespoonful of solid nourishment to half a pint of water in beef tea.” Still, Miss Nightingale admits that there is a certain reparative quality in beef tea, as in ordinary tea. She denounces that favourite article with the friends of the sick, jelly, which usually contains no nourishment at all. Miss Nightingale is constantly called the “soldier’s friend” and one may add that she is above all the patient’s friend. “Attend,” she writes, “to the intelligent cravings of the sick. Patients crave for things laid down in no sick dietary. It often happens that the patient’s stomach is right and the book wrong. You can’t diet a patient from a book.”