uality), we
should be more careful never to let this occur. In very weak patients
there is often a nervous difficulty of swallowing, which is so much
increased by any other call upon their strength that, unless they have
their food punctually at the minute, which minute again must be arranged
so as to fall in with no other minute's occupation, they can take
nothing till the next respite occurs--so that an unpunctuality or delay
of ten minutes may very well turn out to be one of two or three hours.
And why is it not as easy to be punctual to a minute? Life often
literally hangs upon these minutes.

In acute cases, where life or death is to be determined in a few hours,
these matters are very generally attended to, especially in Hospitals;
and the number of cases is large where the patient is, as it were,
brought back to life by exceeding care on the part of the Doctor or
Nurse, or both, in ordering and giving nourishment with minute selection
and punctuality.

[Sidenote: Patients often starved to death in chronic cases.]

But in chronic cases, lasting over months and years, where the fatal
issue is often determined at last by mere protracted starvation, I had
rather not enumerate the instances which I have known where a little
ingenuity, and a great deal of perseverance, might, in all probability,
have averted the result. The consulting the hours when the patient can
take food, the observation of the times, often varying, when he is most
faint, the altering seasons of taking food, in order to anticipate and
prevent such times--all this, which requires observation, ingenuity, and
perseverance (and these really constitute the good Nurse), might save
more lives than we wot of.

[Sidenote: Food never to be left by the patient's side.]

To leave the patient's untasted food by his side, from meal to meal, in
hopes that he will eat it in the interval is simply to prevent him from
taking any food at all. I have known patients literally incapacitated
from taking one article of food after another, by this piece of
ignorance. Let the food come at the right time, and be taken away, eaten
or uneaten, at the right time; but never let a patient have "something
always standing" by him, if you don't wish to disgust him of everything.

On the other hand, I have known a patient's life saved (he was sinking
for want of food) by the simple question, put to him by the doctor, "But
is there no hour when you feel you could eat?" "Oh,