she has failed in getting it,
he will suffer. She must be always exercising her ingenuity to supply
defects, and to remedy accidents which will happen among the best
contrivers, but from which the patient does not suffer the less, because
"they cannot be helped."

[Sidenote: Keep your patient's cup dry underneath.]

One very minute caution,--take care not to spill into your patient's
saucer, in other words, take care that the outside bottom rim of his cup
shall be quite dry and clean; if, every time he lifts his cup to his
lips, he has to carry the saucer with it, or else to drop the liquid
upon, and to soil his sheet, or his bed-gown, or pillow, or if he is
sitting up, his dress, you have no idea what a difference this minute
want of care on your part makes to his comfort and even to his
willingness for food.

FOOTNOTE:
[1]
[Sidenote: Nurse must have some rule of time about the patient's diet.]

Why, because the nurse has not got some food to-day which the patient
takes, can the patient wait four hours for food to-day, who could not
wait two hours yesterday? Yet this is the only logic one generally
hears. On the other hand, the other logic, viz., of the nurse giving a
patient a thing because she _has_ got it, is equally fatal. If she
happens to have fresh jelly, or fresh fruit, she will frequently give it
to the patient half an hour after his dinner, or at his dinner, when he
cannot possibly eat that and the broth too--or worse still, leave it by
his bed-side till he is so sickened with the sight of it, that he cannot
eat it at all.

VII. WHAT FOOD?

[Sidenote: Common errors in diet.]

[Sidenote: Beef tea.]

[Sidenote: Eggs.]

[Sidenote: Meat without vegetables.]

[Sidenote: Arrowroot.]

I will mention one or two of the most common errors among women in
charge of sick respecting sick diet. One is the belief that beef tea is
the most nutritive of all articles. Now, just try and boil down a lb. of
beef into beef tea, evaporate your beef tea, and see what is left of
your beef. You will find that there is barely a teaspoonful of solid
nourishment to half a pint of water in beef tea;--nevertheless there is
a certain reparative quality in it, we do not know what, as there is in
tea;--but it may safely be given in almost any inflammatory disease, and
is as little to be depended upon with the healthy or convalescent where
much nourishment is required. Again, it is an ever ready saw that an egg
is e