The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe – how to observe – what symptoms indicate improvement – what the reverse – which are of importance – which are of none – which are the evidence of neglect – and of what kind of neglect.

Coming up in the streets, I had to learn how to read people early on. I’m a very analytical person. I observe a lot of the things that people don’t notice.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

Keep a watch also on the faults of the patients, which often make them lie about the taking of things prescribed.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.

Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.

Girls talk to each other like men talk to each other. But girls have an eye for detail.

Do not meet or overtake a patient who is moving about in order to speak to him or to give him any message or letter. You might just as well give him a box on the ear. I have seen a patient fall flat on the ground who was standing when his nurse came into the room.

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.

I’m a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what’s wrong and fixing it.

Everything you do in a patient’s room, after he is ‚put up‘ for the night, increases tenfold the risk of his having a bad night. But, if you rouse him up after he has fallen asleep, you do not risk – you secure him a bad night.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.