A hand-book of nursing for family and general use.

Date:
[1878], ©1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A hand-book of nursing for family and general use. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nothing better. Should there be a ventilator in the roof, it should be open at night, and all the bedroom doors might also stand wide open. Always take away chimney-boards and fire-screens, and see that the flue is unobstructed; the chimney acts as a ventilating shaft. If there is a scuttle-door or ventilator in the roof, see that it is opened every day. A sliding- sash with long cord, that can be managed from below, is best, and serves to ventilate the whole house. The nursery.—Air this room thoroughly before the children are put to bed. Do not allow the nurse after- wards to sit there with a light burning, stealing the air from the helpless children. Let her sit in an adjoining room, or even in the entry. Leave the nursery door open at night; a folding screen about it is all that is necessary; and should it be inexpedient to keep a win- dow open in the nursery, it can be open in the entry or adjoining room, and give air through the door. A separate bedfor each child. ^ Besides securing for the nursery good ventilation through an open chimney and open window, provide, wherever it is possible, a separate bed for each child. No one thing is so injurious to the lungs as taking into them what has just been breathed out from them,—that is, carbonic acid, organic matter, and watery vapor, with but little oxygen. The blood is dependent for its healthy condition on exposure to a sufficient amount of oxygen in the lungs, and deprived of it, cannot bring to the tis- sues the food they require, and the tissues of the lungs being imperfectly and poisonously fed through the impure blood, develop tubercles. It is fully admitted that breath- ing into the lungs again the breath just given off is one of the surest and most rapid ways of destroying life by