you are not there. The most devoted
friend or nurse cannot be always _there_. Nor is it desirable that she
should. And she may give up her health, all her other duties, and yet,
for want of a little management, be not one-half so efficient as another
who is not one-half so devoted, but who has this art of multiplying
herself--that is to say, the patient of the first will not really be so
well cared for, as the patient of the second.

It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to
_manage_, as it is to teach her how to nurse. Circumstances must vary
with each different case. But it _is_ possible to press upon her to
think for herself: Now what does happen during my absence? I am obliged
to be away on Tuesday. But fresh air, or punctuality is not less
important to my patient on Tuesday than it was on Monday. Or: At 10
P.M. I am never with my patient; but quiet is of no less
consequence to him at 10 than it was at 5 minutes to 10.

Curious as it may seem, this very obvious consideration occurs
comparatively to few, or, if it does occur, it is only to cause the
devoted friend or nurse to be absent fewer hours or fewer minutes from
her patient--not to arrange so as that no minute and no hour shall be
for her patient without the essentials of her nursing.

[Sidenote: Illustrations of the want of it.]

A very few instances will be sufficient, not as precepts, but as
illustrations.

[Sidenote: Strangers coming into the sick room.]

A strange washerwoman, coming late at night for the "things," will burst
in by mistake to the patient's sick-room, after he has fallen into his
first doze, giving him a shock, the effects of which are irremediable,
though he himself laughs at the cause, and probably never even mentions
it. The nurse who is, and is quite right to be, at her supper, has not
provided that the washerwoman shall not lose her way and go into the
wrong room.

[Sidenote: Sick room airing the whole house.]

The patient's room may always have the window open. But the passage
outside the patient's room, though provided with several large windows,
may never have one open. Because it is not understood that the charge of
the sick-room extends to the charge of the passage. And thus, as often
happens, the nurse makes it her business to turn the patient's room into
a ventilating shaft for the foul air of the whole house.

[Sidenote: Uninhabited room fouling the whole house.]

An uninhabited room,