Two or three berths away a brawny Scot of monster
dimensions, who was convalescent after an acute attack of rheumatism,
would every night before getting into bed say, with a certain naivete,
and without any sense of proportion, that he was going to his "little
nest." And yet people accuse Scotsmen of a lack of imagination. On
either side of me lay a typhoid patient--each delirious. The one on my
right hand imagined he was at home drinking beer in Plymouth, and the
one on my left, an Italian workman, would persistently call for his
boots. It seemed he wished to return to his work and did not think any
other article of dress necessary. The weather at the time was certainly
hot, and this may have suggested such a daring flaunting of the
conventions. It is curious that among typhoid patients this illusion of
doing some action without sufficient clothing is rather prevalent. I
myself at one time imagined that I had been discharged from the hospital
with only the top of my pyjamas and a travelling rug. As I would carry
the travelling rug on my arm, it scarcely compensated for the lack of
other apparel. Through all these vagaries on the part of the patients
the nurses remained kind and careful as ever. This was especially
conspicuous in one case, where a patient insisted that his nurse was a
Chinese pirate, and behaved accordingly, but she gave her charge the
same excellent attention as before.
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