When the crisis of disease is past, the system needs gradual but complete nutrition, and the appetite is clamorous, fickle, or perhaps altogether wanting. Then is the time most critical for the patient, and most trying to the tact, skill, and patience of the nurse. Many a person has been carried safely through a long and distressing illness, only to succumb at last to injudicious feeding, because of the nurse's ignorance or his own indiscretion. When solid food can be safely given, the patient may take it in any of the forms given in the preceding rules.

The following dishes may also be used: broiled squab, venison, chicken, chop, steak, salmon, chicken panada, boiled halibut, roast beef, mutton, cream toast, eggs, and oysters (except when especially forbidden by the physician), sweetbreads, baked potatoes, asparagus, onions, macaroni, custards, Charlotte Russe, snow pudding, icecream, sherbet, blanc-mange, Bavarian cream, sponge cake, simple puddings, stewed fruits, and many others, - receipts for which will be found as indicated in the table of lessons in the Nurse's Course.