Do you feel that your patient is cross or unreasonable? That is
most likely, and is to be expected in nine cases out of every ten.
Put yourself in your patient's place for a little while; try to
realize what it is to have a pain, constant and sickening; to have
it every minute of the twenty-four hours; try to imagine the
fatigue of a respiration of forty; the ache and restlessness of a
fever of 103 degrees; the agony of longing to change a position when it
cannot be done; the despair of a hope for recovery growing daily
less, or the realization of absolute weakness that comes with
early convalescence; try to imagine yourself bearing some of these
ills with nerves and brain weakened by disease, and you will not
wonder that your patient is irritable, that he thinks the minutes
of your absence are "hours," that the unevenness of the bed is
"hard lumps," that the food is "slops," and the medicine "no
good." Remember that he is a prisoner, and he has a cruel jailer;
his bed is his prison, his disease is his jailer, and he suffers
whatever torments his jailer chooses to inflict. Now prisoners are
not, as a rule, a happy class of men; so bear with your prisoner
and help him. Complaining about his shortcomings will never make
them any the less. He is sick. Oh! the pathos of that short
sentence, "He is sick;" that says all. You are well, or you ought
to be; therefore bear with him.

You have chosen a hard profession, but we are told it is the
noblest one a woman can follow. Why is it noble? Exactly because
it is hard, and the hardness consists in your forgetting yourself
and giving your strength to others. There are many hard lives that
are not in the least noble, but there is no noble life that is not
hard. A coal miner has, I suppose, a hard life, yet no one calls
it a noble one; why? Because he works solely for his wages, and he