Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / By S. Weir Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914.
Date:
1907, ©1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / By S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    to the treatment, because no mere technical training will dispense in the nurse any more than in the physician with those finer natural qualifications which make their training avail- able. Over-harshness is in some ways worse than over-easiness, because it makes less pleas- ant the relation between nurse and patient, and the latter should regard the former as her next friend. Let the nurse, therefore, place upon the doctor the burden of decision in disputed matters; his position will not be injured with the patient by strict enforcement of the letter of the law, while the nurse's may be. But one nurse will suit one patient and not another: so that I never hesitate to change my nurse if she does not fit the case, and to change if necessary more than once. The degree of seclusion should be prescribed from the first, and it is far better to find that the original rules may be profitably relaxed than to be obliged to draw the lines more strictly when the patient has at first been indulged. For instance, it is well to forbid the receipt of any letters from home, unless anxious relatives insist that the patient must have home news. In that case the letters should be mere bulletins,