, 1886-07-07
CAFE OF 4 slck ROOM.
Fresh Air and Light-Food for the Pa
tient-LIfe and Death

Fresh Air and Light-Food for the Pa
tient-Life and Death.
The sick room must be constantly sup
piled with fresh air. Admit the fresh
air in such a way as to cause no strong
current of air near or about your pa
tent; if the window is open shut the
door, except in very warm or still
weather; remember that you can often
open a lee window with safety and bene-
fit when it would be highly dangerous to
open a window looking toward the direc-
ton from which the wind comes. AS n
rule it is better to drop a window from
the top than to raise it from the bottom;
cool air, being heavier, descends, and
when introduced high up in the room
thus freshens the air more thoroughly.
Light is also an important thing in a
sick room. The sunbeam is a greater
purifier, and it is only in some affections
of the eyes, in the acute stages OF some
diseases, and in certain nervous diseases,
that it is desirable to darken a sick ROOM.
You can easily contrive to admit plenty
Of light without allowing it to fall IN
such a way as to be unpleasant to your
patients, and n cheerful outlook from the
window certainly hastens convalescence.
At night make sure that the lamp or
candle does not smoke or smell, nor the
gas leak; and place your light in such a
way that it throws q shadow on the wall
or ceiling near the patient. The nervous
system IS apt to be 30 weakened by long
or severe illness that a little thing-a
mere shadow, for instance-which in
health would be unnoticed, may produce
most disastrous effects.
Cleanliness and order should reign in
the sick-room. A well person seldom in
habits one room moro than eight hours
daily, whereas a sick person inhabits it
all the time. Dust with u slightly damp
cloth, and sweep, if there be a carpet,
with a hard brush and dust-pan, having
previously s%prinkled the carpet with wet
tea-leaves.
The feeling of the sick is a large sub
ject, and one which is worthy of being
treated in considerable detail, but I can
only venture on a very few hints here.
Seek to make the food of an invalid, if
it is only a cup of cruel, as inviting as
possible, and never prepare any food in
the sick-room. Let the tray be covered
with a clean napkin, let every utensil be
s~crupulously clean and bright inside and
out, and do not take away the little APP
petite which the sick person has by
bringing large quantities of food at n
time. 1t is far better to bring too little
than too much, as n further supply is
easily got. Let everything be the best
of its kind that you can get; an egg
which is the least stale, or milk in the
slightest degree sour, placed before a
sick person may easily take away his ap-
petite for the whole day.
Suppose the doctor orders a cup full of
milk or beef tea, for instance, every two,
three or four hours, and the patients
stomach rejects it; try then a tablespoon
full at a time, and, if that is rejected, a
t~easpoonful or wen less. I say deliber-
ately that on such points as these hinge
sometimes the issues of life and death.
incidentally it may here be mentioned
that for irritability of the stomach there
is generally nothing better than cracked
ice, the Jumps being allowed to melt in
the mouth; and / will now tell you a
simple device which prevents the ice
from wasting, and makes one supply
last for a number of hours. Take a deep
bowl, holding perhaps a quart, and a
piece of coarse flannel oblong in shape,
and about twice as long as it is broad;
then fasten the flannel with string or
elastic in such a way around the bowl as
to form n flannel cup within the bowl,
reaching only half or two-thirds the dis
lance to the bottom of the latter. Then
put the cracked ice into the flannel cup
and cover it over with the spare flannel
which serves as a flap. If you have no
coarse flannel, fine flannel can be used,
but you should then punch a small hole
in the bottom of the cup. The idea is to
keep the ice dry, the water running
through into the bowl below the fan
nel.-Youth's Companion.