ring. Very few people know how to
read to the sick; very few read aloud as pleasantly even as they speak.
In reading they sing, they hesitate, they stammer, they hurry, they
mumble; when in speaking they do none of these things. Reading aloud to
the sick ought always to be rather slow, and exceedingly distinct, but
not mouthing--rather monotonous, but not sing song--rather loud, but not
noisy--and, above all, not too long. Be very sure of what your patient
can bear.

[Sidenote: Never read aloud by fits and starts to the sick.]

(2.) The extraordinary habit of reading to oneself in a sick room, and
reading aloud to the patient any bits which will amuse him or more often
the reader, is unaccountably thoughtless. What _do_ you think the
patient is thinking of during your gaps of non-reading? Do you think
that he amuses himself upon what you have read for precisely the time it
pleases you to go on reading to yourself, and that his attention is
ready for something else at precisely the time it pleases you to begin
reading again? Whether the person thus read to be sick or well, whether
he be doing nothing or doing something else while being thus read to,
the self-absorption and want of observation of the person who does it,
is equally difficult to understand--although very often the read_ee_ is
too amiable to say how much it disturbs him.

[Sidenote: People overhead.]

One thing more:--From the flimsy manner in which most modern houses are
built, where every step on the stairs, and along the floors, is felt all
over the house; the higher the story, the greater the vibration. It is
inconceivable how much the sick suffer by having anybody overhead. In
the solidly built old houses, which, fortunately, most hospitals are,
the noise and shaking is comparatively trifling. But it is a serious
cause of suffering, in lightly built houses, and with the irritability
peculiar to some diseases. Better far put such patients at the top of
the house, even with the additional fatigue of stairs, if you cannot
secure the room above them being untenanted; you may otherwise bring on
a state of restlessness which no opium will subdue. Do not neglect the
warning, when a patient tells you that he "Feels every step above him to
cross his heart." Remember that every noise a patient cannot _see_
partakes of the character of suddenness to him; and I am persuaded that
patients with these peculiarly irritable nerves, are positively less
injured by hav