Notes on Nursing | Page 7

sick room. In the best hospitals it is
now a rule that no slop-pail shall ever be brought into the wards, but
that the utensils, shall be carried direct to be emptied and rinsed at the
proper place. I would it were so in the private house.
[Sidenote: Fumigations.]
Let no one ever depend upon fumigations, "disinfectants," and the like,
for purifying the air. The offensive thing, not its smell, must be
removed. A celebrated medical lecturer began one day, "Fumigations,
gentlemen, are of essential importance. They make such an abominable
smell that they compel you to open the window." I wish all the
disinfecting fluids invented made such an "abominable smell" that they
forced you to admit fresh air. That would be a useful invention.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Sidenote: Why are uninhabited rooms shut up?]
The common idea as to uninhabited rooms is, that they may safely be
left with doors, windows, shutters, and chimney-board, all closed--
hermetically sealed if possible--to keep out the dust, it is said; and that
no harm will happen if the room is but opened a short hour before the
inmates are put in. I have often been asked the question for uninhabited
rooms.--But when ought the windows to be opened? The answer
is--When ought they to be shut?
[2] It is very desirable that the windows in a sick room should be such
that the patient shall, if he can move about, be able to open and shut
them easily himself. In fact, the sick room is very seldom kept aired if
this is not the case--so very few people have any perception of what is a

healthy atmosphere for the sick. The sick man often says, "This room
where I spend 22 hours out of the 24, is fresher than the other where I
only spend 2. Because here I can manage the windows myself." And it
is true.
[3] [Sidenote: An air-test of essential consequence.]
Dr. Angus Smith's air test, if it could be made of simpler application,
would be invaluable to use in every sleeping and sick room. Just as
without the use of a thermometer no nurse should ever put a patient
into a bath, so should no nurse, or mother, or superintendent, be
without the air test in any ward, nursery, or sleeping-room. If the main
function of a nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the
air without, without lowering the temperature, then she should always
be provided with a thermometer which indicates the temperature, with
an air test which indicates the organic matter of the air. But to be used,
the latter must be made as simple a little instrument as the former, and
both should be self-registering. The senses of nurses and mothers
become so dulled to foul air, that they are perfectly unconscious of
what an atmosphere they have let their children, patients, or charges,
sleep in. But if the tell-tale air test were to exhibit in the morning, both
to nurses and patients, and to the superior officer going round, what the
atmosphere has been during the night, I question if any greater security
could be afforded against a recurrence of the misdemeanor.
And oh, the crowded national school! where so many children's
epidemics have their origin, what a tale its air-test would tell! We
should have parents saying, and saying rightly, "I will not send my
child to that school, the air-test stands at 'Horrid.'" And the dormitories
of our great boarding schools! Scarlet fever would be no more ascribed
to contagion, but to its right cause, the air-test standing at "Foul."
We should hear no longer of "Mysterious Dispensations," and of
"Plague and Pestilence," being "in God's hands," when, so far as we
know, He has put them into our own. The little air-test would both
betray the cause of these "mysterious pestilences," and call upon us to
remedy it.
[4] With private sick, I think, but certainly with hospital sick, the nurse
should never be satisfied as to the freshness of their atmosphere, unless
she can feel the air gently moving over her face, when still.
But it is often observed that the nurses who make the greatest outcry

against open windows, are those who take the least pains to prevent
dangerous draughts. The door of the patients' room or ward must
sometimes stand open to allow of persons passing in and out, or heavy
things being carried in and out. The careful nurse will keep the door
shut while she shuts the windows, and then, and not before, set the door
open, so that a patient may not be left sitting up in bed, perhaps in a
profuse perspiration, directly in the draught between the open door and
window. Neither, of course, should a patient, while being