If we accept this as a general principle we shall be immediately met
with anecdotes and instances to prove the contrary. Just so if we were
to take, as a principle--all the climates of the earth are meant to be
made habitable for man, by the efforts of man--the objection would be
immediately raised,--Will the top of Mont Blanc ever be made habitable?
Our answer would be, it will be many thousands of years before we have
reached the bottom of Mont Blanc in making the earth healthy. Wait till
we have reached the bottom before we discuss the top.

[Sidenote: Of the sufferings of disease, disease not always the cause.]

In watching disease, both in private houses and in public hospitals, the
thing which strikes the experienced observer most forcibly is this, that
the symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and
incident to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at
all, but of something quite different--of the want of fresh air, or of
light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality
and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these. And
this quite as much in private as in hospital nursing.

The reparative process which Nature has instituted and which we call
disease has been hindered by some want of knowledge or attention, in one
or in all of these things, and pain, suffering, or interruption of the
whole process sets in.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint,
if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally
the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

[Sidenote: What nursing ought to do.]