ot and
wine, or some other light nourishing diet, should be given every hour,
for the patient's stomach will reject large supplies. In very weak
patients there is often a nervous difficulty in swallowing, which is
much increased if food is not ready and presented at the moment when it
is wanted: the nurse should be able to discriminate, and know when this
moment is approaching."

2428. Diet suitable for patients will depend, in some degree, on their
natural likes and dislikes, which the nurse will do well to acquaint
herself with. Beef-tea is useful and relishing, but possesses little
nourishment; when evaporated, it presents a teaspoonful of solid meat to
a pint of water. Eggs are not equivalent to the same weight of meat.
Arrowroot is less nourishing than flour. Butter is the lightest and most
digestible kind of fat. Cream, in some diseases, cannot be replaced.
But, to sum up with some of Miss Nightingale's useful maxims:--Observation
is the nurse's best guide, and the patient's appetite the rule. Half a
pint of milk is equal to a quarter of a pound of meat. Beef-tea is the
least nourishing food administered to the sick; and tea and coffee, she
thinks, are both too much excluded from the sick-room.

THE MONTHLY NURSE.

2429. The choice of a monthly nurse is of the utmost importance; and in
the case of a young mother with her first child, it would be well for
her to seek advice and counsel from her more experienced relatives in
this matter. In the first place, the engaging a monthly nurse in good
time is of the utmost importance, as, if she be competent and clever,
her services will be sought months beforehand; a good nurse having
seldom much of her time disengaged. There are some qualifications which
it is evident the nurse should possess: she should be scrupulously clean
and tidy in her person; honest, sober, and noiseless in her movements;
should possess a natural love for children, and have a strong nerve in
case of emergencies. Snuff-taking and spirit-drinking must not be
included in her habits; but these are happily much less frequent than
they were in former days.

2430. Receiving, as she often will, instructions from the doctor, she
should bear these in mind, and carefully carry them out. In those
instances where she does not feel herself sufficiently informed, she
should ask advice from the medical man, and not take upon herself to
administer medicines, &c., without his knowledge.

2431. A monthly nurs