or sourness in it, makes it of all articles, perhaps, the most
injurious; diarrhoea is a common result of fresh milk allowed to become
at all sour. The nurse therefore ought to exercise her utmost care in
this. In large institutions for the sick, even the poorest, the utmost
care is exercised. Wenham Lake ice is used for this express purpose
every summer, while the private patient, perhaps, never tastes a drop of
milk that is not sour, all through the hot weather, so little does the
private nurse understand the necessity of such care. Yet, if you
consider that the only drop of real nourishment in your patient's tea is
the drop of milk, and how much almost all English patients depend upon
their tea, you will see the great importance of not depriving your
patient of this drop of milk. Buttermilk, a totally different thing, is
often very useful, especially in fevers.

[Sidenote: Sweet things.]

In laying down rules of diet, by the amounts of "solid nutriment" in
different kinds of food, it is constantly lost sight of what the patient
requires to repair his waste, what he can take and what he can't. You
cannot diet a patient from a book, you cannot make up the human body as
you would make up a prescription,--so many parts "carboniferous," so
many parts "nitrogenous" will constitute a perfect diet for the patient.
The nurse's observation here will materially assist the doctor--the
patient's "fancies" will materially assist the nurse. For instance,
sugar is one of the most nutritive of all articles, being pure carbon,
and is particularly recommended in some books. But the vast majority of
all patients in England, young and old, male and female, rich and poor,
hospital and private, dislike sweet things,--and while I have never
known a person take to sweets when he was ill who disliked them when he
was well, I have known many fond of them when in health, who in sickness
would leave off anything sweet, even to sugar in tea,--sweet puddings,
sweet drinks, are their aversion; the furred tongue almost always likes
what is sharp or pungent. Scorbutic patients are an exception, they
often crave for sweetmeats and jams.

[Sidenote: Jelly.]

Jelly is another article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends
of the sick; even if it could be eaten solid, it would not nourish, but
it is simply the height of folly to take 1/8 oz. of gelatine and make it
into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water and then to give it to the
sick