re-composition

Updated: May 25, 2025

If we consider that, with sick as with well, every thought decomposes some nervous matter, that decomposition as well as re-composition of nervous matter is always going on, and more quickly with the sick than with the well, that, to obtrude abruptly another thought upon the brain while it is in the act of destroying nervous matter by thinking, is calling upon it to make a new exertion, if we consider these things, which are facts, not fancies, we shall remember that we are doing positive injury by interrupting, by "startling a fanciful" person, as it is called.

Florence Nightingale - Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not