r that we are doing positive injury by interrupting, by
"startling a fanciful" person, as it is called. Alas! it is no fancy.

[Sidenote: Interruption damaging to sick.]

If the invalid is forced, by his avocations, to continue occupations
requiring much thinking, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a
patient suffering under delirium or stupor you may suffocate him, by
giving him his food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently with a
spoon and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food
unconsciously, but with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If
you offer it a thought, especially one requiring a decision, abruptly,
you do it a real not fanciful injury. Never speak to a sick person
suddenly; but, at the same time, do not keep his expectation on the
tiptoe.

[Sidenote: And to well.]

This rule, indeed, applies to the well quite as much as to the sick. I
have never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant
interruption who did not muddle away their intellects by it at last. The
process with them may be accomplished without pain. With the sick, pain
gives warning of the injury.

[Sidenote: Keeping a patient standing.]

Do not meet or overtake a patient who is moving about in order to speak
to him, or to give him any message or letter. You might just as well
give him a box on the ear. I have seen a patient fall flat on the ground
who was standing when his nurse came into the room. This was an accident
which might have happened to the most careful nurse. But the other is
done with intention. A patient in such a state is not going to the East
Indies. If you would wait ten seconds, or walk ten yards further, any
promenade he could make would be over. You do not know the effort it is
to a patient to remain standing for even a quarter of a minute to listen
to you. If I had not seen the thing done by the kindest nurses and
friends, I should have thought this caution quite superfluous.[16]

[Sidenote: Patients dread surprise.]

Patients are often accused of being able to "do much more when nobody is
by." It is quite true that they can. Unless nurses can be brought to
attend to considerations of the kind of which we have given here but a
few specimens, a very weak patient finds it really much less exertion to
do things for himself than to ask for them. And he will, in order to do
them, (very innocently and from instinct) calculate the time his nurse
is likely to be absent, from a fea