I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

I use the word nursing for want of a better.

Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. Nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs.

There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions