=Phthisiphobia.= People frequently reproach the nurse with the fact that her teaching tends to alarm the patient and his family, and to produce a community phthisiphobia which works great hardship in individual cases. As far as the community is concerned, fear of tuberculosis is a good, wholesome sentiment, and infinitely preferable to ignorance and indifference. We cannot have too much of a public opinion which declines to be exposed to this disease, and which will therefore provide the machinery to cope with it. As far as the family is concerned, we have never been able to produce _enough_ fear of tuberculosis. It would greatly facilitate the campaign if the first feeling of alarm and apprehension could become permanent, instead of very transitory and fleeting. Tuberculosis is so slow and insidious in its onset,—there is nothing spectacular, by which we can demonstrate to the ignorant mind the relation between cause and effect, exposure and infection,—that the educational method alone is inadequate to deal with the situation. If the alarmed patient and his household could or would continue the preventive measures which at first so strongly appeal to them, and which in the beginning they apply with boundless enthusiasm, we should have comparatively little difficulty. But the disease is chronic and slow; the scare wears off, and the cry of “Wolf, Wolf” loses its value. And then follows a relaxation of prophylactic measures. Each time the nurse must stir them up anew—encourage, threaten, alarm, coax, bribe,—do everything in her power to awaken them from their mental apathy and drowsiness, which, as in morphia poisoning, precedes death. CHAPTER XI Inspection of the House—The Patient’s Bedroom—Porches—Gardens and Tents—Flat Roofs—Clothing and Bedclothing—Artificial Heat—Rest—Fresh Air—Food—Cooking—The Bedridden Patient.