ightened suffering woman
that there is nothing unusual in her case, that she has nothing to fear
but a few hours' pain, may cheer her most effectually. This is advice of
quite another order. It is the advice of experience to utter
inexperience. But the advice we have been referring to is the advice of
inexperience to bitter experience; and, in general, amounts to nothing
more than this, that _you_ think _I_ shall recover from consumption
because somebody knows somebody somewhere who has recovered from fever.

I have heard a doctor condemned whose patient did not, alas! recover,
because another doctor's patient of a _different_ sex, of a _different_
age, recovered from a _different_ disease, in a _different_ place. Yes,
this is really true. If people who make these comparisons did but know
(only they do not care to know), the care and preciseness with which
such comparisons require to be made, (and are made,) in order to be of
any value whatever, they would spare their tongues. In comparing the
deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly
considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes,
and the diseases of all the cases. It does not seem necessary to mention
this. It does not seem necessary to say that there can be no comparison
between old men with dropsies and young women with consumptions. Yet the
cleverest men and the cleverest women are often heard making such
comparisons, ignoring entirely sex, age, disease, place--in fact, _all_
the conditions essential to the question. It is the merest _gossip_.

[2]
A small pet animal is often an excellent companion for the sick, for
long chronic cases especially. A pet bird in a cage is sometimes the
only pleasure of an invalid confined for years to the same room. If he
can feed and clean the animal himself, he ought always to be encouraged
to do so.

XIII. OBSERVATION OF THE SICK.

[Sidenote: What is the use of the question, Is he better?]

There is no more silly or universal question scarcely asked than this,
"Is he better?" Ask it of the medical attendant, if you please. But of
whom else, if you wish for a real answer to your question, would you
ask? Certainly not of the casual visitor; certainly not of the nurse,
while the nurse's observation is so little exercised as it is now. What
you want are facts, not opinions--for who can have any opinion of any
value as to whether the patient is better or worse, excepting