the sick generally; the more
they sleep, the better will they be able to sleep.

[Sidenote: Noise which excites expectation.]

[Sidenote: Whispered conversation in the room.]

I have often been surprised at the thoughtlessness, (resulting in
cruelty, quite unintentionally) of friends or of doctors who will hold a
long conversation just in the room or passage adjoining to the room of
the patient, who is either every moment expecting them to come in, or
who has just seen them, and knows they are talking about him. If he is
an amiable patient, he will try to occupy his attention elsewhere and
not to listen--and this makes matters worse--for the strain upon his
attention and the effort he makes are so great that it is well if he is
not worse for hours after. If it is a whispered conversation in the same
room, then it is absolutely cruel; for it is impossible that the
patient's attention should not be involuntarily strained to hear.
Walking on tip-toe, doing any thing in the room very slowly, are
injurious, for exactly the same reasons. A firm light quick step, a
steady quick hand are the desiderata; not the slow, lingering, shuffling
foot, the timid, uncertain touch. Slowness is not gentleness, though it
is often mistaken for such: quickness, lightness, and gentleness are
quite compatible. Again, if friends and doctors did but watch, as nurses
can and should watch, the features sharpening, the eyes growing almost
wild, of fever patients who are listening for the entrance from the
corridor of the persons whose voices they are hearing there, these would
never run the risk again of creating such expectation, or irritation of
mind.--Such unnecessary noise has undoubtedly induced or aggravated
delirium in many cases. I have known such--in one case death ensued. It
is but fair to say that this death was attributed to fright. It was the
result of a long whispered conversation, within sight of the patient,
about an impending operation; but any one who has known the more than
stoicism, the cheerful coolness, with which the certainty of an
operation will be accepted by any patient, capable of bearing an
operation at all, if it is properly communicated to him, will hesitate
to believe that it was mere fear which produced, as was averred, the
fatal result in this instance. It was rather the uncertainty, the
strained expectation as to what was to be decided upon.

[Sidenote: Or just outside the door.]

I need hardly say that t