Notes on Nursing | Page 9

ordinary oblong sink is an abomination. That great surface of stone,
which is always left wet, is always exhaling into the air. I have known
whole houses and hospitals smell of the sink. I have met just as strong a
stream of sewer air coming up the back staircase of a grand London
house from the sink, as I have ever met at Scutari; and I have seen the
rooms in that house all ventilated by the open doors, and the passages
all _un_ventilated by the closed windows, in order that as much of the
sewer air as possible might be conducted into and retained in the
bed-rooms. It is wonderful.
Another great evil in house construction is carrying drains underneath
the house. Such drains are never safe. All house drains should begin
and end outside the walls. Many people will readily admit, as a theory,
the importance of these things. But how few are there who can
intelligently trace disease in their households to such causes! Is it not a
fact, that when scarlet fever, measles, or small-pox appear among the
children, the very first thought which occurs is, "where" the children
can have "caught" the disease? And the parents immediately run over in
their minds all the families with whom they may have been. They never
think of looking at home for the source of the mischief. If a neighbour's
child is seized with small-pox, the first question which occurs is
whether it had been vaccinated. No one would undervalue vaccination;
but it becomes of doubtful benefit to society when it leads people to
look abroad for the source of evils which exist at home.
[Sidenote: Cleanliness.]
4. Without cleanliness, within and without your house, ventilation is
comparatively useless. In certain foul districts of London, poor people
used to object to open their windows and doors because of the foul
smells that came in. Rich people like to have their stables and dunghill
near their houses. But does it ever occur to them that with many
arrangements of this kind it would be safer to keep the windows shut
than open? You cannot have the air of the house pure with dung-heaps
under the windows. These are common all over London. And yet
people are surprised that their children, brought up in large "well-aired"

nurseries and bed-rooms suffer from children's epidemics. If they
studied Nature's laws in the matter of children's health, they would not
be so surprised.
There are other ways of having filth inside a house besides having dirt
in heaps. Old papered walls of years' standing, dirty carpets, uncleansed
furniture, are just as ready sources of impurity to the air as if there were
a dung-heap in the basement. People are so unaccustomed from
education and habits to consider how to make a home healthy, that they
either never think of it at all, and take every disease as a matter of
course, to be "resigned to" when it comes "as from the hand of
Providence;" or if they ever entertain the idea of preserving the health
of their household as a duty, they are very apt to commit all kinds of
"negligences and ignorances" in performing it.
[Sidenote: Light.]
5. A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house,
always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth, and promotes
scrofula, rickets, &c., among the children.
People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill they cannot
get well again in it. More will be said about this farther on.
[Sidenote: Three common errors in managing the health of houses.]
Three out of many "negligences, and ignorances" in managing the
health of houses generally, I will here mention as specimens--1. That
the female head in charge of any building does not think it necessary to
visit every hole and corner of it every day. How can she expect those
who are under her to be more careful to maintain her house in a healthy
condition than she who is in charge of it?--2. That it is not considered
essential to air, to sun, and to clean rooms while uninhabited; which is
simply ignoring the first elementary notion of sanitary things, and
laying the ground ready for all kinds of diseases.--3. That the window,
and one window, is considered enough to air a room. Have you never
observed that any room without a fire-place is always close? And, if
you have a fire-place, would you cram it up not only with a
chimney-board, but perhaps with a great wisp of brown paper, in the
throat of the chimney--to prevent the soot from coming down, you say?
If your chimney is foul, sweep it; but don't expect that you can ever air
a room with only one aperture; don't suppose