Anjanette’s Reviews > Life in the Sick-Room > Status Update

One “Peril” of the Sick-Room is LIVING ABSTRACTLY, since being an invalid is characterized by a separation from people and an exhaustion from “ordinary incidents.” Martineau suggests an employment, because idleness makes us irrational. But, beware the hazards of journaling: for “how should the journal of a sick-room avoid becoming a register of the changes of a morbid state?” 🖊️

For the invalid, the “worst pangs are in the soul” and much comfort comes from “great thoughts (which are angels of consolation sent by God to all to whom he has given souls.)”

Truth, goodness, beauty-I see you!

“We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.” —Shakespeare

This chapter, TEMPER, included observations about reasons for/consequences of/remedies against mental suffering during physical suffering. The natural optimism of the invalid child was an interesting addition!

Harriet The Sociologist appears, touching all sorts of random tangents: the controversy of common postage rates; the implications of publishing letters posthumously; the consideration of political liberalism.

“History, Life and Speculation assume a continuity such as would not have been believed possible by ourselves in former days, when they appeared to constitute departments of study as seperate as can be.”

In this chapter, Harriet persuades the reader that the invalid needs a proper view of nature: birds, the night sky, open space—preferably the sea.

“…in former days, had simple, natural influences such powerful over me? How is it that the long-suffering sick, already deprived of so much, are ever needlessly debarred from natural and renovating pleasures like these?”

Our Harriet overthinks every detail regarding the sickroom, but I usually like when people speak passionately within their expertise.

This essay was all about the types of consolations—as someone with chronic disease, she really nailed it! I’ll also be keeping some of these suggestions in mind as I walk alongside others.

Begins with a letter to the reader—

First essay-
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE SICK-ROOM