The manner in which the food is served is of great practical importance. A meal served in a careless, slovenly manner may disgust the patient and seriously retard convalescence.

Everything should be served as daintily as possible, the dishes, glasses, and traycloth being thoroughly clean. To most invalids the meals are the events of the day, and too much care cannot be exercised to ensure that all the details should be done in as attractive a way as possible. Patients should not, as a rule, be consulted as to their meals, but there should be an endeavour to ascertain beforehand what the patient likes. Any particular fancy as to sweetness or otherwise should be remembered. Untouched food should never be left in an invalid's room, but should be put aside in a cool place; and no food should be cooked or prepared in the invalid's presence if it can be done elsewhere. Food should never be tasted in presence of the patient, and it should not be cooled by being blown upon, as this naturally disgusts the patient.

In the case of helpless patients who cannot feed themselves, nourishment may be given by the spoon or the feeding-cup. When the patient is very helpless, a useful device is to pull out the cheek, by inserting the finger between the gum and the cheek, and thus introduce the fluid nourishment slowly at one side. A teaspoon is the most convenient size of spoon for child-feeding, and a dessertspoon for the adult. As to drinking-cups, the shape made with three handles is very convenient for the patient to use when feeding himself; but when the services of a nurse are required, a small boat-shaped feeding-cup with a curved spout, and about 3 inches of rubber tubing attached, is the most useful. In the case of the latter, great care must be taken to maintain thorough cleanliness of the apparatus in use.

In feeding with a spoon or feeding-cup, it is certainly easier for the patient to have the head raised, if this is permissible; the nurse in these cases passes the left arm under the pillow on which the patient is lying, and gently raises the head.