Aid and comfort

“ CONCLUDING PRAYER
O FAITHFUL servants of God and powerful protectors of man, Holy Helpers! Since Our Lord appointed you the heavenly advocates for our needs on earth, I confidently turn to you for help in my distress. Countless numbers praise you for aiding them with counsel in doubt, with consolation in anxiety, with health in illness, with safety in danger, with delivery from prison, and with help and assistance in all tribulations. Therefore I, too, have recourse to you, and implore you not to refuse me your aid. ”

“ The grave matter of health has already received my attention. Life, even comfort, may well challenge our solicitude and care; still, I am of opinion that both may be dutifully staked upon a transcendent issue involving the welfare of a people. ”

“ In all cases where it appears this attention and placing them in our domestic circle, will contribute to their comfort or their cure, we, as a matter of feeling and of duty, treat them with equal kindness and attention, always giving considerations of comfort and of cure, the first place. ”

“ My hands want to be so helpful, tending, soothing, serving my whole frame to support his stricken side—O to comfort his heart—to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love, helping time & the inborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through every part. ”

“ Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life, in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged? ”

“ It is necessary, of course, that the routine of living should be sufficiently preserved for the health of the others not to be affected, but matters of comfort and well-being for all take precedence of everything else.
The well should make all wise sacrifices for the sake of the ill, such as being quiet about the house; never complaining at late or simple meals; setting aside personal plans and comfort in order to assist, if needed, in the care of the ill; looking out for the relief and comfort of the nurse, upon whom the major part of the responsibility rests ”

“ If you would preserve your youthful vigour, and run successfully the course which is before you, you must neither overtax your physical or mental powers, nor neglect to take reasonable care of your health. Social intercourse, active exercise, bodily rest, and mental repose, are, each in its turn, as essential to your well-being, as they are to your personal comfort ”

“ So far as experience can teach anything, it teaches us that both indoor relief and family aid, or outdoor relief, as properly practiced, are both indispensable in any comprehensive plan of public charity. ”

“ Well—you know the formula, 'while there's life there's hope.' With the best of care, and nursing, and medical aid, there may be one chance in a hundred for him. With hospital care and attendance, there's not a shadow. ”

“ We should at least determine each night to comfort someone who is in trouble, and if we know the exact nature of the trouble we must do our best to adapt our measures to the needs of the case. If the sufferer be weak and exhausted, the helper should use his will to pour into him physical strength. If, on the other hand, he is excited or hysterical, the helper should endeavour to enfold him in a special aura of calm and gentleness — wrap him up, as it were in a strong thought-form of peace and harmony, just as one would wrap up a person in a blanket. ”

“ Cultivate a taste for good reading and evening studies. Home life with its gentle restraints, pure friendships, and healthful discipline, should be highly valued. There is no liberty like that of a well-regulated home. To large numbers of young men in business houses, home life is impracticable.
11. Be of Good Cheer and Courage.—Recovery will be gradual, and not sudden; vital force is developed slowly from within. The object aimed at by medicine and counsel, is to aid and increase nervous and physical vigor, and give tone to the demoralized system. ”

“ They soon became aware that the aid could not be material, that spiritual strength and consolation must be from spiritual sources and that they might, if themselves strong in spirit, move upon the minds of others in human life to aid those dear to them. ”

“ For many years I have worked amongst you, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and adversity, and your welfare is dear to me. Sometimes I have felt discouraged, acutely sensible of failure and disappointment. ”

“ Not alone the health and bodily comfort of those who compose her kingdom, but their life-long usefulness and eternal happiness, are committed to her watchful care, and may be wrecked by one false step, one unguarded act, one ill-tempered word or unjust suspicion. ”

“ In the next place, instead of allowing the mind to dwell on the faults of those who minister to our comfort and convenience, cultivate a habit of making every possible benevolent allowance and palliation. ”

“ Those that consult the good of their neighbours, that study the things which make for peace and give peaceable advice, promote healing attempts and contrive healing methods, and, according as their sphere is, further the public welfare, will have not only the credit, but the comfort of it. ”

“ Feeling, as I do, for the sufferings of others by violent sea-sickness, sufferings beyond the power of language to describe, I exhort medical men to pay attention to the malady, either to its prevention, or to the mitigation of its effects: they would thus confer a blessing on many, and would receive that best and most grateful reward—a self-approving heart, in having afforded comfort to their fellow-creatures under a most distressing and overpowering disease. ”

“ In the world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice, and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food, the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment—what greater, more intimate, more holy Services are there than these? ”

“ Think, friends, what it would be—yes, what it will be, when all the rough, sturdy men of danger, living every hour in the face of accident and death, shall know what to do in the moment for his writhing companion in toil; when the homes—the children in the streets and in the schools—shall all possess the knowledge which this method of human beneficence teaches—this is First Aid—this is what it stands for—the lessons which it inculcates and its faithful apostles teach. ”

“ Let me summon health and spirits and nerves to my aid, for I have asked and obtained a most difficult mission, and I must acquire patient endurance of suffering, resistance of evil, and take difficulties and pain with courage and even with avidity. ”

“ Each must bear his own burden, is the earthly sentence on the sick and suffering. Happy those who can cast their care on the Saviour, and realize that He careth for them.
This sweet experience was not gained without an effort, even by so spiritual a nature as Charlotte Elliott. Let none of my young readers think that the careful training of pious parents, the possession of a gentle temper and kindly natural disposition, will be enough in themselves, to secure comfort during the tedious, wearing trials of oft-recurring or long-continued sickness. ”

“ The comfort, health, peace, temper, recreation, general welfare, intellectual, moral, and religious training of a family make up, indeed, a charge of the very highest dignity, and one which must tax to the utmost every faculty of the individual to whom it is intrusted. ”

“ Our plans must not ignore the family resources for self-help. The best charity work develops these resources. If outside help is needed, it should be made conditional upon renewed efforts at work or in school, upon willingness to receive training, upon cleanliness, or upon some other development within the family that will aid in their uplifting. All this is suggested, not with a view to making the conditions of relief difficult, but with a view to using relief as a lever ”

“ Higher standards of individual efficiency and comfort. The physical welfare of the individual has been promoted to a greater degree, or at all events preached more eloquently, within the last few generations than ever before. ”

“ All day long I find so much to interest me, and so many thoughts about my children fill my mind, that I hardly find time to think of my own feelings. Care is a blessing."
With what a patient, heavenly smile this is said! How much of life's true philosophy is contained in that closing sentence! Yes, care is a blessing. What countless thousands would, but for daily care, be unutterably miserable. And yet we are ever trying to throw off care; to rise into positions where we will be free from action or duty. ”

“ If a man fall on a crowded street in the city, how instantaneous is the aid that cares for him. He is lifted and conveyed tenderly to his home, or to a hospital, or to some temporary resting-place if the ill be but a slight one. ”

“ Care should be exercised lest any hindrance, should, for any reason, be placed in the way of those who have, whether young or old, rich or poor, so spontaneously dedicated themselves to so urgent and holy a mission. ”

“ Volunteering your time at a soup kitchen, teaching a child to read, visiting a patient in the hospital, or taking a meal to an elderly neighbor or a shut-in are all simple acts of compassion that can brighten someone's life. ”

“ And when this is done, though ancient English brawn will not reappear, there will be health, and its great blessing of cheerful spirits. The special means by which this shall be accomplished we leave to the care of the gentlemen abovenamed, and their compeers—merely putting in one word for gentle exercise, and two words for the cherishing of mental health, the expulsion of morbid excitements, assume what guise they may. We should take extreme care not to admit decay at the summit. ”

“ To procure an aid, which, by its example, would be as important as its valor, disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; which would perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our character. They would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. ”

“ May not the busiest and hardest life be somewhat lightened,329 the day mapped out, so that each duty has the same hours? It is worth while to try to keep the family in health, to prevent the sorrow, the anxiety, the trouble of illness in the house, of which so much can be prevented. ”

“ Health is essential for physical and mental labor. The maintenance of health consists in having proper food, proper clothing, and proper shelter. Work is a duty, nature demands it. Exercise that duty. ”

“ Habits of neatness and order, of kindness and ready help, of self-sacrifice and self-control, become lifelong in their persistence and develop a physical as well as moral conscience which makes for public health. ”

“ All manner of happiness, peace, and plenty came in those years to bless the patient waiters, hopeful workers, and devout believers in the wisdom and justice of Him who sends disappointment, poverty, and sorrow to try the love of human hearts and make success the sweeter when it comes. ”

“ Now, my dear, let me remind thee of thy increasing bodily infirmities, and the necessity it lays thee under to spare thyself of the burthen and care of much bodily and mental labour and exercise, by which thou will experience more quiet rest, both to body and mind, and that it may be, my dear, our united care to endeavor that our last days may be our best days, that so we may witness a state and qualification to pass gently and quietly out of time, into the mansions of eternal blessedness, where all sighing and sorrow, will be at an end. ”

“ There will be found order, cleanliness, food, clothing, warmth, refuge for the homeless, medicine and attendance for the sick, rest and sufficiency for old age, and sympathy, the true and active sympathy which the poor show to the poor, for the unhappy. ”

“ They feel such a moment to be the reward of many a previous hour of care and anxiety; it is their happy privilege to mark each improvement in person, mind and heart—the fruit of past labours and prayers—the cheering promise amid the doubts of the future. ”

“ Hence be instructed, oh my soul, in the concerns of thy eternal welfare. Are prosperity, health, and relatives, agreeable? rejoice in them as one that rejoices not: these must have an end; and adversity, sickness, and death, will come. ”

“ CHARITY lavishes care on the sick and infirm, on the old, on guests and new-comers. It requires that we visit those who are ill, to cheer and console them, to foresee their wants, and thereby to spare them the pain or humiliation of asking for anything. ”

“ His daily comfort, his yearly profit, and the general welfare of his family, all depend upon the weather, or upon his skill in foreseeing its changes, and availing himself of every moment which is favourable to his purposes. ”

“ I need not tell you, gentlemen, that the invaluable blessing of health is at the foundation of all happiness. Thoroughly learn the conditions on which health depends, and resolutely practise those virtues which preserve it. ”

“ We are adherents of a benign, holy religion, and may, by consistent conduct, and wise, patient efforts, become the harbingers of peace to a hitherto distracted and trodden-down race. No great result is ever attained without patient, long-continued effort. In the enterprise in which we have the honor to be engaged, deeds of sympathy, consideration, and kindness, which, when viewed in detail, may seem thrown away, if steadily persisted in, are sure, ultimately, to exercise a commanding influence. ”

“ Here in their hour of sickness and suffering lay those whose health and strength had given way under unrequited labour—some of them, no later than the previous day, had been urged with the lash to their accustomed tasks—and their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were even at that hour sweating over the earth whose increase was to procure for others all the luxuries which health can enjoy, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. ”

“ The public care little for medical titles, or for those artificial distinctions which, for the more convenient subdivision of labour, we have established amongst ourselves; they look for men who will prove useful to them in time of need—men in whom they can place confidence, whom they may admit without fear into the bosom of their families, whose feelings and behaviour are those of gentlemen, who are skilled to relieve their bodily sufferings, and to whom they may open the secrets of their hearts and turn for sympathy and advice in seasons of affliction. ”