Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
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![Dirty air from tJic carpet. Again, the fire fills the room with coal-dust. 8. Dirty air coming from the carpet. Above all, take care of the carpets, that the animal dirt left there by the feet of visitors does not stay there. Floors, unless the grain is filled up and polished, are just as bad. The smell from the floor of a school-room or ward, when any moisture brings out the organic matter by whica it is saturated, might alone be enough to warn us of the mischief that is going on. The outer air, then, can only be kept clean by sanitary improve- ments, and by consuming smoke. The expense in soap, which this single improvement would save, is quite incalculable. The inside air can only be kept clean by excessive care in the ways mentioned above—to rid the walls, carpets, furniture, ledges, &c., of the organic matter and dust—dust consisting greatly of this organic matter—with which they become saturated, and which is what really makes the room musty. Without cleanliness, you cannot have all the eftect of ventilation ; without ventilation, you can have no thorough cleanliness. A^ery few people, be they of what class they may, have any idea of the exquisite cleanliness required in the sick room. For much of what I have said applies less to the hospital than to the private sick- room. The smoky chimney, the dusty furniture, the utensils emptied but once a day, often keep the air of the sick constantly dh'ty in the best private houses. The well have a curious habit of forgetting that what is to them but a trifling inconvenience, to be patiently put up with, is to the sick a source of suff'ering, delaying recovery, if not actually hastening death. The well are scarcely ever more than eight houi'S, at most, in the same room. Some change they can always make, if only for a few minutes. Even during the supposed eight hours, they can change their posture or their position in the room. But the sick man, who never leaves his bed, who cannot change by any movement of his own hi« air, or his light, or his warmth; who cannot obtain quiet, or get out of the smoke, or the smell, or the dust; he is really poisoned or depressed by what is to you the merest trifle. '' What can't be cured must be endured, is the very worst and most dangerous maxim for a nurse which ever w^as made. Patience and resignation in her are but other words for carelessness or indiff'erence—contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable, if in resfard to her sick. XI. PEESONAL CLEANLINESS. Poisoning by the skin. In almost all diseases, the function of the skin is, more or less,] disordered; and in many most important diseases nature relieves herself almost entirely by the skin. This is particularly the case with children. But the excretion, which comes from the skin, is left there, unless removed by washing or by the clothes. Every nurse](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452524_0058.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
