Connecticut western news., 1872-01-19

Bed and Bedding for the Sick.

If a bed is higher than sofa, the patient often prefers not to get out at all. rather than to undergo the fatigue oi getting out. If the bed was a low one, he might often feel like taking few minutes exercise every day in other rooms, or even in the open air. It is so very odd that people never think of this, or of how many more times patient who IS ln bed for twenty-four hours is obliged to get in or out of bed than they who only get into bed and out of bed perhaps once in twenty-four hours.
 A patients bed should always be in the ightest spot in the room, and he should be able to see out of the window.
 1t IS scarcely necessary to say that the old four-post bed, with curtains, is ut terly inadmissable, whether for the sick or for the well. Hospital bedsteads are In many respects very much better than private ones.
 There is reason to believe tbat not a few of the cases apparently resembling scrofula among children proceed from t2 habit of sleeping with the head under the bed-clothes and so inhaling air al- ready breathed, which is further con- taminated by exhalation from the skin. Patients are sometimes given to similar habit, and it often happens that the bed-clothes are so disposed that the patient must necessarily breathe air more or less poisoned by exhalations from the skin. A good nurse will attend to this. It IS an important part, so to speak, of ventilation.
 It may be worth while to remark that where there is any danger of bed-sores, blanket should never be placed under the patient. It remains damp, and acts similar to poultice.
 Never use anything but slight blankets as bed covering for the sick. The heavy cotton and impervious counterpane is bad, for the very reason that it keeps in the emanations from the sick person. while the blankets allow them to pass through. Weak patients are invariably distressed by great weight of bed clothes, which often prevents their get ting any sound sleep whatever.
 One word about pillows. Every weak fers more or less from difficulty in breath ing. To take the weight of the poor chest, which at best is hardly up to it's work, ought therefore to be the object of the nurse in arranging his pillows. Now "A61o oOOS oIe uO duC WuaC are the cOD- sequences :? She piles the pillows one upon the other like wall of bricks, the head thrown upon the chest, and the shoulders are pushed forward, so as not to allow the lungs room to expand. The pillows, in fact, lean upon the patient not the patient upon the pillows. It is impossible to give rule for this, be- cause it must vary with the figure of the patient.
 Tall patients suffer much more than short ones, because of the drag of the long limbs upon the waist. But the ob- iect is to support, with the pillows, the back below the breathing apparatus and above the hips, so as to allow the shoul- ders room to fall back, and to support the head, without throwing it forward. The suffering of exhaustive patients is great ly increased by neglect of these points. And many an invalid, too weak to drag about the pillow himself, slips his book or anything at hand behind the lower part of his back to support it.-Boston Journal of Chemistry.