[Sidenote: Variety a means of recovery.]
To any but an old nurse, or an old patient, the degree would be quite
inconceivable to which the nerves of the sick suffer from seeing the
same walls, the same ceiling, the same surroundings during a long
confinement to one or two rooms.
The superior cheerfulness of persons suffering severe paroxysms of pain
over that of persons suffering from nervous debility has often been
remarked upon, and attributed to the enjoyment of the former of their
intervals of respite. I incline to think that the majority of cheerful
cases is to be found among those patients who are not confined to one
room, whatever their suffering, and that the majority of depressed cases
will be seen among those subjected to a long monotony of objects about
them.
The nervous frame really suffers as much from this as the digestive
organs from long monotony of diet, as e.g. the soldier from his
twenty-one years' "boiled beef."
[Sidenote: Colour and form means of recovery.]
The effect in sickness of beautiful objects, of variety of objects, and
especially of brilliancy of colour is hardly at all appreciated.
Such cravings are usually called the "fancies" of patients. And often
doubtless patients have "fancies," as, e.g. when they desire two
contradictions. But much more often, their (so called) "fancies" are the
most valuable indications of what is necessary for their recovery. And
it would be well if nurses would watch these (so called) "fancies"
closely.
I have seen, in fevers (and felt, when I was a fever patient myself) the
most acute suffering produced from the patient (in a hut) not being able
to see out of window, and the knots in the wood being the only view. I
shall never forget the rapture of fever patients over a bunch of
bright-coloured flowers. I remember (in my own case) a nosegay of wild
flowers being sent me, and from that moment recovery becoming more
rapid.
[Sidenote: This is no fancy.]
People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The
effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we
are affected by form, by colour, and light, we do know this, that they
have an actual physical effect.
Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to
patients are actual means of recovery.
But it must be _slow_ variety, e.g., if you shew a patient ten or
twelve engravings successively, ten-to-one that he does not become cold
and faint, or feverish, or even sick; but hang one up opposite him, one
on each successive day, or week, or month, and he will revel in the
variety.
[Sidenote: Flowers.]
The folly and ignorance which reign too often supreme over the
sick-room, cannot be better exemplified than by this. While the nurse
will leave the patient stewing in a corrupting atmosphere, the best
ingredient of which is carbonic acid; she will deny him, on the plea of
unhealthiness, a glass of cut-flowers, or a growing plant. Now, no one
ever saw "overcrowding" by plants in a room or ward. And the carbonic
acid they give off at nights would not poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded
rooms, they actually absorb carbonic acid and give off oxygen.
Cut-flowers also decompose water and produce oxygen gas. It is true
there are certain flowers, e.g., lilies, the smell of which is said to
depress the nervous system. These are easily known by the smell, and can
be avoided.
[Sidenote: Effect of body on mind.]
Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the
body. Much of it is true. But I wish a little more was thought of the
effect of the body on the mind. You who believe yourselves overwhelmed
with anxieties, but are able every day to walk up Regent-street, or out
in the country, to take your meals with others in other rooms, &c., &c.,
you little know how much your anxieties are thereby lightened; you
little know how intensified they become to those who can have no
change;[19] how the very walls of their sick rooms seem hung with their
cares; how the ghosts of their troubles haunt their beds; how impossible
it is for them to escape from a pursuing thought without some help from
variety.
A patient can just as much move his leg when it is fractured as change
his thoughts when no external help from variety is given him. This is,
indeed, one of the main sufferings of sickness; just as the fixed
posture is one of the main sufferings of the broken limb.
[Sidenote: Help the sick to vary their thoughts.]
It is an ever recurring wonder to see educated people, who call
themselves nurses, acting thus. They vary their own objects, their own
employments many times a day; and while nursing (!) some bed-ridden
sufferer, they let him lie there staring at a dead wall, without any
change of object to enable him to vary his thoughts; and it never even
occurs to them, at least to move his bed so that he can look out of
window. No, the bed is to be always left in the darkest, dullest,
remotest, part of the room.[20]
I think it is a very common error among the well to think that "with a
little more self-control" the sick might, if they choose, "dismiss
painful thoughts" which "aggravate their disease," &c. Believe me,
almost _any_ sick person, who behaves decently well, exercises more
self-control every moment of his day than you will ever know till you
are sick yourself. Almost every step that crosses his room is painful to
him; almost every thought that crosses his brain is painful to him; and
if he can speak without being savage, and look without being unpleasant,
he is exercising self-control.
Suppose you have been up all night, and instead of being allowed to have
your cup of tea, you were to be told that you ought to "exercise
self-control," what should you say? Now, the nerves of the sick are
always in the state that yours are in after you have been up all night.
[Sidenote: Supply to the sick the defect of manual labour.]
We will suppose the diet of the sick to be cared for. Then, this state
of nerves is most frequently to be relieved by care in affording them a
pleasant view, a judicious variety as to flowers,[21] and pretty things.
Light by itself will often relieve it. The craving for "the return of
day," which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the
desire for light, the remembrance of the relief which a variety of
objects before the eye affords to the harassed sick mind.
Again, every man and every woman has some amount of manual employment,
excepting a few fine ladies, who do not even dress themselves, and who
are virtually in the same category, as to nerves, as the sick. Now, you
can have no idea of the relief which manual labour is to you--of the
degree to which the deprivation of manual employment increases the
peculiar irritability from which many sick suffer.
A little needle-work, a little writing, a little cleaning, would be the
greatest relief the sick could have, if they could do it; these _are_
the greatest relief to you, though you do not know it. Reading, though
it is often the only thing the sick can do, is not this relief. Bearing
this in mind, bearing in mind that you have all these varieties of
employment which the sick cannot have, bear also in mind to obtain for
them all the varieties which they can enjoy.
I need hardly say that I am well aware that excess in needle-work, in
writing, in any other continuous employment, will produce the same
irritability that defect in manual employment (as one cause) produces in
the sick.