396 NURSING THE SICK. 



are preferable to all the preparations of arrow-root, sago, tapioca 

 and food of that class. Cream, in many long, chronic diseases, ie 

 quite unsurpassed by any other article whatever. It seems to act 

 in the same manner as beef -tea and to most it is much easier of 

 digestion than milk. In fact, it seldom disagrees. 



Sour milk, however, should be used with caution, as there are 

 some diseases in which it is injurious. Buttermilk, a totally 

 different thing, is often very useful, especially in fevers. 



In laying down the rules of diet, by the amounts of solid 

 nutriment in different kinds of food, it is a constant error to lose 

 sight of what the patient requires to repair his waste ; what he can 

 take, and what he cannot. The nurse's observation here will mater- 

 ially assist the doctor; the patient's fancies will materially assist 

 the nurse. 



" In the diseases produced by bad food, such as dysentery a;id 

 diarrhea in cases of scurvy, the patient's stomach often craves for 

 and digests things some of which would be laid down in no dietary 

 that ever was invented for sick, and especially not for such sick. 

 These are fruit, pickles, jam, gingerbread, fat of ham or bacon, suet, 

 cheese, butter, milk. These cases I have seen not by ones, nor by 

 tens, but by hundreds ; and the patient's stomach was right and the 

 book was wrong. The articles craved for, in these cases, might 

 have been principally arranged under the two heads of fat and 

 vegetable acids. 



" There is often a marked difference between men and women 

 in this matter of sick feeding. Women's digestion is generally 

 slower." Dr. Gunn. 



Jelly is another article of diet in great favor with nurses and 

 friends of the sick; but it is now known that jelly does not nourish 

 that it has a tendency to produce diarrhea, and to trust to it to repair 

 the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick 

 under the guise of feeding them. If one hundred spoonfuls of jelly 

 were given in the course of the day, you would have given one 

 spoonful of gelatine, which spoonful has no nutritive power what- 

 ever. 



And, nevertheless, gelatine contains a large quantity of nitro- 

 gen, which is one of the most powerful elements in nutrition; on the 

 other hand beef-tea may be chosen as an illustration of great nutri- 

 tious power in sickness coexisting with a very small amount of 

 solid nitrogenous matter. 



Dr. Christison says that " every one will be struck with the 

 readiness with which " certain classes of " patients will often take 

 diluted meat juice or beef -tea repeatedly, when they refuse all other 

 kinds of food." This is particularly remarkable, in " cases of gas- 

 tric-fever, in which," he says, " little or nothing else besides beef- 

 tea or diluted meat-juice " has been taken for weeks, or even months; 

 " and yet a pint of beef-tea contains scarcely one-fourth ounce of 

 anything but water." The result is so striking that lie asks what is 



