Transcriber’s Note: A number of printer errors have been corrected. These are marked with mouse-hovers like this, and also listed at the end. The two diagrams on pages 50 and 96 were originally rendered using very large curly brackets. In this version, nested lists have been used, but links to images from the original are provided.
Philadelphia and London
W. B. Saunders Company
1921
Copyright, 1921, by W. B. Saunders Company
PRINTED IN AMERICA
PRESS OF
W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
This little book is the outgrowth of a conviction, strengthened by someyears of experience with hundreds of supposedly normal young people inschools and colleges, confirmed by my years of training in aneurological hospital and months of work in a big city general hospital,that it is of little value to help some people back to physical healthif they are to carry with them through a prolonged life the miseries ofa sick attitude. As nurses I believe it is our privilege and our duty towork for health of body and health of mind as inseparable. Experiencehas proved that too often the physically ill patient (hitherto nervouslywell) returns from hospital care addicted to the illness-acceptingattitude for which the nurse must be held responsible.
I conceive of it as possible that every well trained nurse in ourcountry shall consider it an essential to her professional success toleave her patient imbued with the will to health and better equipped toattain it because the sick attitude has been averted, or if alreadypresent, has been treated as really and intelligently as the sick body.To this end I have dealt with the simple principles of psychology onlyas the nurse can immediately apply them.
The writer wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness for criticism of thiswork and for several definitions better than her own, in the chaptersThe Normal Mind and Variations From Normal Mental Processes, toDr. Robert S. Carroll, who through the years of hospital training helpedher to translate her collegiate psychology from fascinating abstractprinciples into the sustaining bread of daily life.
Mary F. Porter.
Asheville, N. C.,
August, 1921.