[1]
[Sidenote: Absurd statistical comparisons made in common conversation by
the most sensible people for the benefit of the sick.]
There are, of course, cases, as in first confinements, when an assurance
from the doctor or experienced nurse to the frightened 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.