s really poisoned or depressed by what is to you the
merest trifle.

"What can't be cured must be endured," is the very worst and most
dangerous maxim for a nurse which ever was made. Patience and
resignation in her are but other words for carelessness or indifference
--contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable, if in regard to her
sick.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
[Sidenote: How a room is _dusted_.]

If you like to clean your furniture by laying out your clean clothes
upon your dirty chairs or sofa, this is one way certainly of doing it.
Having witnessed the morning process called "tidying the room," for many
years, and with ever-increasing astonishment, I can describe what it is.
From the chairs, tables, or sofa, upon which the "things" have lain
during the night, and which are therefore comparatively clean from dust
or blacks, the poor "_things_" having "caught" it, they are removed to
other chairs, tables, sofas, upon which you could write your name with
your finger in the dust or blacks. The _other_ side of the "things" is
therefore now evenly dirtied or dusted. The housemaid then flaps
everything, or some things, not out of her reach, with a thing called a
duster--the dust flies up, then re-settles more equally than it lay
before the operation. The room has now been "put to rights."

[2]
[Sidenote: Atmosphere in painted and papered rooms quite
distinguishable.]

I am sure that a person who has accustomed her senses to compare
atmospheres proper and improper, for the sick and for children, could
tell, blindfold, the difference of the air in old painted and in old
papered rooms, _coeteris paribus._ The latter will always be dusty, even
with all the windows open.

[3]
[Sidenote: How to keep your wall clean at the expense of your clothes.]

If you like to wipe your dirty door, or some portion of your dirty wall,
by hanging up your clean gown or shawl against it on a peg, this is one
way certainly, and the most usual way, and generally the only way of
cleaning either door or wall in a bed room!

XI. PERSONAL CLEANLINESS.

[Sidenote: Poisoning by the skin.]

In almost all diseases, the function of the skin is, more or less,
disordered; and in many most important diseases nature relieves herself
almost entirely by the skin. This is particularly the case with
children. But the excretion, which comes from the skin, is left there,
unless removed by washing or by the clothes. Every nurse should keep
th