But a great many mature men and women allow feeling to
unduly influence their thinking. The sentimental nurse, for instance,
may find it very difficult to give an ordered hypodermic. The patient
dreads the pain and the nurse fears hurting her. Suppose she were to
fail to give it on such grounds. This is an almost unthinkable case. But
the very nurse who agrees that such an emotional weakling should not be
allowed to train, will help her patient, even when recuperating nicely,
to grow inexcusably self-centered, by sympathizing with every complaint,
warning her at every turn, by allowing her and even encouraging her,
perhaps, to discuss her illness and suffering in the minutest detail.
This nurse is more damaging than the sentimentalist who fails to give
the hypodermic; for that slip is easily discovered, and the transgressor
must immediately reform and obey orders, or be dismissed. But the second
nurse may take perfect care of the sick body, and the doctor never
realize that she is developing the sickness idea in her patient's mind.
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