Sick person

“ In all diseases, which are any way dangerous, all the near relations assemble in the sick person’s house. They eat and sleep there as long as the danger lasts; every one nurses him, and watches by him in his turn. ”

“ That he ought to be called to the sense of duty, and is flying in the face of Providence;—then know that your patient is receiving all the injury that he can receive from a visitor.
How little the real sufferings of illness are known or understood. How little does any one in good health fancy him or even herself into the life of a sick person. ”

“ During weakness and pain, irritability and unreasonableness are as characteristic as other symptoms, and it is as foolish to demand a normal mental state from a sick person as it would be to demand a normal temperature. For a cheerful, reasonable, and unselfish patient—and there are surprisingly many—one should be devoutly thankful, but patience and pity should be given no less to those whose tortured nerves cause suffering to others as well as to themselves. ”

“ I will spread sickness in the world and you will cure it. Your fame will go abroad and people will send for you and pay you handsomely. This is how we’ll work together: when you hear of a person taken sick, go to his house and offer to cure him. ”

“ This notion, though not so prevalent as formerly, still lingers in the popular mind and lies hidden away in the select circles of religious people, occasionally to be brought forth and urged upon public consideration with emphasis, when some person is taken sick and remains for many months and perhaps years an invalid, or when one taken sick suddenly dies. ”

“ 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 ”

“ She should note all the symptoms of the patient, and do everything in her power to promote comfort and recovery. She should anticipate the wishes, and not cause the patient to ask for everything which is desired. So far as practicable, let the wishes be gratified. The senses of the sick often become morbidly acute, and those things which in health would pass unnoticed, in sickness are so magnified as to occasion annoyance and vexation. Sick persons are not all alike, and the peculiarities of each must be studied separately. ”

“ It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to manage, as it is to teach her how to nurse. Circumstances must vary with each different case. But it is possible to press upon her to think for herself: Now what does happen during my absence? ”

“ That there are disorders, and seasons of illness, which almost compel the forfeiture of the mental and moral freedom and ease of the sick-room, is a painful truth; and those who suffer under such irresistible or unresisted irritation are supremely to be compassionated, whether their actual pain of body be more or less. But it is quite as certain that a large number of sufferers are exempt from temptation to this kind of failure, being subject, the while, to some other,—more tolerable, as affecting only, or chiefly, their own happiness. ”

“ Every house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to bed very sick. ”

“ The fact is, the knowledge of the symptoms of disease is, to a mother, almost a sealed book. If she were better acquainted with these matters, how much more useful would she be in a sick-room, and how much more readily would she enter into the plans and views of the medical man! By her knowledge of the symptoms, and by having his advice in time, she would nip disease in the bud, and the fight might end in favor of life, for “sickness is just a fight between life and death.” ”

“ Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shall not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better. ”

“ And great disorders have been and are caused with such sick when they leave the said hospital with little health and strength—some returning to their own houses, and some to those of others, where because of the little or no comfort, and the poor and injurious food, with wine, tobacco, buyo, and other similar things, and the continual temptations to associate with women of evil life, they relapse, so that their sickness has no cure. ”

“ Every one knows the tendency of disease to produce irritation,—sometimes imperceptibly to the sufferer, sometimes unavoidably, and with a painful consciousness. In no duty or sympathy for the sick is there more need of kind allowance ”

“ We talk of the infection of a fever, but we often forget that prejudices are infinitely more infectious. The poor man, ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clad, destitute, heart-sick, and weary, falls victim to the first epidemic that crosses his path. ”

“ It is incredible that such things should happen, but in the confusion caused by a sudden and severe illness, untidy and careless habits are apt to come to the surface, and loom largely as aggressive faults. Sickness is not only a great test of the sufferer’s own character and disposition, but of those of the people around him, and as a general rule, I have discovered more beautiful qualities in sick people, and those about them, who dwell in cottages or even hovels, than in more splendid homes. ”

“ But then no human soul Could be more sweet when one of us is sick. We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throats Are weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer, And clothes were warmer, food more regular, And sleep more regular, it might be different. ”

“ Consider, and in order to understand something better what hell is, set before your eyes a poor sick man lying on his bed, burning with a pestilential fever, attended with a universal pain over all his body, his head perfectly rent asunder, his eyes ready to fly out, his teeth raging, his sides pierced with dreadful stitches, his belly racked with violent cholic ”

“ He should remember that the sick are sensitive and fastidious, that they love the sweet odors and the pure tints of flowers, and if his presence is not like the breath of the rose, if his hands are not like the leaf of the lily, his visit may be unwelcome, and if he looks behind him he may see a window thrown open after he has left the sick-chamber. ”

“ Now, if you please, there is such mortal fear of infection that we are to leave the sick to suffer, just as if we were savages. You know those new hospital trains that were started to take patients from the hospitals down to the health resorts. ”

“ Let him see in the sick-chamber, where the outward and inward world seem alike to the sufferer to be crumbling asunder, how irresistible is the conviction of an upholding power, new-modelling all decaying things, and imbuing them{173} with immortality. If he himself can but learn what protracted sickness is, let him ponder well whether a superstition, however early and solemnly conveyed and cherished, could stand the stress,—not merely of pain, but of the questionings prompted by pain. ”

“ There is a growing tendency to discriminate between sickness and illness, limiting the words sick and sickness to some slight disturbance of the physical system, as nausea, and applying the words ill and illness to protracted disease and disordered health. ”

“ But if he be once sick, then it is a death unto him and a grief insupportable, which doth aggravate his malady, to have one at his bedside sounding ever in his ears; See what comes of your drunkenness, your idleness, your surfeiting and gluttony, your wenching and lechery, these are the causes of your disease. ”

“ Diseases of the body, if not cured, work a steady impairment of health, and bring pains and physical disabilities. If their assaults be upon nervous centres, or vital organs, the danger of paralysis or death becomes imminent. Now, as to this disease of intemperance, which is a social and moral as well as a physical disease, it is not to be concealed that it has invaded the common body of the people to an alarming degree, until, using the words of Holy Writ, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." ”

“ It seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. ”

“ Another expedient, but principally connected with children's ailments, is to trap the malevolent demon who has induced the sickness, and this they profess to do by laying a trail of sugar from the child's sick-bed to a well. ”

“ Keeping it cheerful and healthy becomes burdensome, and a task that he neglects. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" men's minds become morbid; the body sympathises with the mind, and in its turn becomes predisposed to disease and Cholera, Dysentery or Fever becoming epidemic, may, in a few weeks, decimate the force. ”

“ Slight causes, therefore, which would produce little or no effect upon the mind of one in firm health, may affect strongly the mind of a sick man. A single example will suffice. The patient was sick with typhus fever. ”

“ But I really believe there is scarcely a greater worry which invalids have to endure than the incurable hopes of their friends. There is no one practice against which I can speak more strongly from actual personal experience, wide and long, of its effects during sickness observed both upon others and upon myself. I would appeal most seriously to all friends, visitors, and attendants of the sick to leave off this practice of attempting to "cheer" the sick by making light of their danger and by exaggerating their probabilities of recovery. ”

“ These silent symptoms should be observed by the attendants, who should always see and know when their patients are sick. Some of these symptoms are, crying, [Pg 32] moaning, weakness, going to bed, or lying down, cough, changes in respiration, signs of fever, a flushed face, quick pulse, or chills, a pale face, vomiting, or diarrhœa, and loss of appetite.
Much insanity is associated with great physical disturbances which require careful nursing. The old and feeble, the paralytic and bedridden also require special attention and care. ”

“ DR. HELSHAM'S ANSWER.
⁠THE doctor's first rhyme would make any Jew sick:
I know it has made a fine lady in blue sick,
For which she is gone in a coach to Killbrew sick,
Like a hen I once had, from a fox when she flew sick:
Last Monday a lady at St. Patrick's did spew sick:
And made all the rest of the folks in the pew sick,
The surgeon who bled her his lancet out drew sick,
And stopt the distemper, as being but new sick.
The yacht, the last storm, had all her whole crew sick;
Had we two been there, it would have made me and you sick:
A lady that long'd, is by eating of glew sick ”

“ If a sick Man makes his Address to a vulgar Physician, he demands his Complaint; t’other replies, he is troubled either with a Vomiting, Looseness, want of Stomach, Cough, bad Digesture, difficulty of Breathing, a Phtisick, Faintness, Jaundice, Green-Sickness, Dropsy, Gout, Convulsion-Fits, Palsy, Diziness, or Swimming in the Brain, Spitting of Blood, an Ague, a continual great Heat or Fever, &c. These are all evident Diseases the Party himself expresses he is troubled with ”

“ The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition. ”

“ She has no equal as a comforter of the sick. [viii] What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of sick beds! What shall we do with them? Shall man, with his rough hand, and heavy foot, and impatient bearing, minister? No; he cannot soothe the pain. He can not quiet the nerves. He knows not where to set the light. ”

“ LXXXVI. On the head of visits to sick people, there is much to be said, as in making them, we should attend not only to the rules of good-breeding, but to those of charity also; and it is impossible, if we are wanting in the last of these obligations, for us to comply with those of the first. Sick people, both with respect to their souls and bodies, should be treated and dealt by with as much delicacy and caution, as you would handle an exquisitely thin vessel of glass. A sick body is affected by, and sensible of the slightest touch ”

“ The woman who believes it takes no strength to bear a little noise or some disagreeable announcements, and loses patience with the weak, nervous invalid who is agonized with creaking doors or shoes, or loud, shrill voices, or rustling papers, or sharp, fidgety motions, or the whispering so common in sick-rooms and often so acutely distressing to the sufferer, will soon correct such misapprehensions by herself experiencing a nervous fever. ”

“ Others, like my Ricky, drag out the years in pain, debility, and sorrow. Fits of fever seize them. They take to their beds for days, for weeks, for months—racked and suffering and exhausted, sick at their stomachs, sick in their heads. ”

“ What man has not lain on a sick-bed? But if ever it has fallen to the lot of any to have been tended by a radiant girl at his head, and to have been fanned by her lily hands,—he alone can say that disease is not altogether unpleasant. ”

“ Whenever the people would see her sitting thus, they began to murmur among themselves, saying that she was trying to make some one sick, and that some body would be sick. If some one should become sick anywhere within a distance of a number of miles from her, their first thought was that she had made them sick, and she was the one that could cure them. ”