Notes on Nursing | Page 8

washed, or in
any way exposed, remain in the draught of an open window or door.
[5] [Sidenote: Don't make your sick room into a sewer.]
But never, never should the possession of this indispensable lid confirm
you in the abominable practice of letting the chamber utensil remain in
a patient's room unemptied, except once in the 24 hours, i.e., when the
bed is made. Yes, impossible as it may appear, I have known the best
and most attentive nurses guilty of this; aye, and have known, too, a
patient afflicted with severe diarrhoea for ten days, and the nurse (a
very good one) not know of it, because the chamber utensil (one with a
lid) was emptied only once in 24 hours, and that by the housemaid who
came in and made the patient's bed every evening. As well might you
have a sewer under the room, or think that in a water-closet the plug
need be pulled up but once a day. Also take care that your _lid_, as well
as your utensil, be always thoroughly rinsed.
If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient, "because
it is not her business," I should say that nursing was not her calling. I
have seen surgical "sisters," women whose hands were worth to them
two or three guineas a-week, down upon their knees scouring a room or
hut, because they thought it otherwise not fit for their patients to go into.
I am far from wishing nurses to scour. It is a waste of power. But I do
say that these women had the true nurse-calling--the good of their sick
first, and second only the consideration what it was their "place" to
do--and that women who wait for the housemaid to do this, or for the
charwoman to do that, when their patients are suffering, have not the
making of a nurse in them.

II. HEALTH OF HOUSES.[1]
[Sidenote: Health of houses. Five points essential.]
There are five essential points in securing the health of houses:--

1. Pure air. 2. Pure water. 3. Efficient drainage. 4. Cleanliness. 5. Light.
Without these, no house can be healthy. And it will be unhealthy just in
proportion as they are deficient.
[Sidenote: Pure air.]
1. To have pure air, your house be so constructed as that the outer
atmosphere shall find its way with ease to every corner of it. House
architects hardly ever consider this. The object in building a house is to
obtain the largest interest for the money, not to save doctors' bills to the
tenants. But, if tenants should ever become so wise as to refuse to
occupy unhealthy constructed houses, and if Insurance Companies
should ever come to understand their interest so thoroughly as to pay a
Sanitary Surveyor to look after the houses where their clients live,
speculative architects would speedily be brought to their senses. As it is,
they build what pays best. And there are always people foolish enough
to take the houses they build. And if in the course of time the families
die off, as is so often the case, nobody ever thinks of blaming any but
Providence[2] for the result. Ill-informed medical men aid in sustaining
the delusion, by laying the blame on "current contagions." Badly
constructed houses do for the healthy what badly constructed hospitals
do for the sick. Once insure that the air in a house is stagnant, and
sickness is certain to follow.
[Sidenote: Pure water.]
2. Pure water is more generally introduced into houses than it used to
be, thanks to the exertions of the sanitary reformers. Within the last few
years, a large part of London was in the daily habit of using water
polluted by the drainage of its sewers and water closets. This has
happily been remedied. But, in many parts of the country, well water of
a very impure kind is used for domestic purposes. And when epidemic
disease shows itself, persons using such water are almost sure to suffer.
[Sidenote: Drainage.]
3. It would be curious to ascertain by inspection, how many houses in
London are really well drained. Many people would say, surely all or
most of them. But many people have no idea in what good drainage
consists. They think that a sewer in the street, and a pipe leading to it
from the house is good drainage. All the while the sewer may be
nothing but a laboratory from which epidemic disease and ill health is
being distilled into the house. No house with any untrapped drain pipe

communicating immediately with a sewer, whether it be from water
closet, sink, or gully-grate, can ever be healthy. An untrapped sink may
at any time spread fever or pyaemia among the inmates of a palace.
[Sidenote: Sinks.]
The