ms of the disease at
all, but of something quite different--of the want of fresh air, or of
light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality
and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these. And
this quite as much in private as in hospital nursing.

The reparative process which Nature has instituted and which we call
disease has been hindered by some want of knowledge or attention, in one
or in all of these things, and pain, suffering, or interruption of the
whole process sets in.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint,
if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally
the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

[Sidenote: What nursing ought to do.]

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to
signify little more than the administration of medicines and the
application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh
air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and
administration of diet--all at the least expense of vital power to the
patient.

[Sidenote: Nursing the sick little understood.]

It has been said and written scores of times, that every woman makes a
good nurse. I believe, on the contrary, that the very elements of
nursing are all but unknown.

By this I do not mean that the nurse is always to blame. Bad sanitary,
bad architectural, and bad administrative arrangements often make it
impossible to nurse. But the art of nursing ought to include such
arrangements as alone make what I understand by nursing, possible.

The art of nursing, as now practised, seems to be expressly constituted
to unmake what God had made disease to be, viz., a reparative process.

[Sidenote: Nursing ought to assist the reparative process.]

To recur to the first objection. If we are asked, Is such or such a
disease a reparative process? Can such an illness be unaccompanied with
suffering? Will any care prevent such a patient from suffering this or
that?--I humbly say, I do not know. But when you have done away with all
that pain and suffering, which in patients are the symptoms not of their
disease, but of the absence of one or all of the above-mentioned
essentials to the success of Nature's reparative processes, we shall
then know what are the symptoms of and the sufferings inseparable from
the disease.

Another and the commonest exclamation which will be instantly made