Passaic City record., 1893-08-05
HOME NURSING
Some Practical Advice About the
Care Of the Sick.
Suggestions by a Woman VIM
Knows by Experience.

Nursing is work about which there
is always more to learn.
A professional nurse is good in
vention; once we thought she was 60
ing to change the nature of things,
and make it a pleasure to be sick. We
know better now. The professional
nurse has been something of disap-
pointment, because too much was ex-
pected; but she is valuable, and SO
also is the invention and care of low
ing non-professionals.
There are always an Infnity of de-
vices that can be discovered as adapt
ed for the relief of suffering that are
not down in the books. We are too
apt to drop old things when we take
up new; for instance, the hot-water
bag has driven out the old soap-stone,
and that is mistake. A heated soap
stone, dropped in woolen bag made
to fit it, and kept in the foot of the
bed, in many cases where strong art-
fetal heat is required, answers the
purpose better than the bag; it dis
tributes its warmth more evenly and
lasts much longer. Every chronic in
valid should be furnished with pillows
of all sorts and sizes. He or she who
may not know how much they are
needed, may suppose that the regula-
tion pillows of an everyday bed are
all the pillows possible outside ''cozy
corner" but if some slimpsy pillows,
some fat pillows and some pillows six
inches square are furnished, delightful
discoveries of comforting possibilities
will be made. A pillow Of wheat chaff
made thin will sometimes be found in
valuable as the immediate rest of the
head, especially in hot weather. It
comes in when air pillows are being
found too slippery, and hops are OBJ
jected too for their smell, and the heat
of feathers becomes deadly.
The whole question of bed clothing
for the sick is a most important one
contrary to the usual notion, it is in
summer that wooden sheets are most
needed in sickness. Of course, /
mean real sheets, not thin blankets.
It is when very little cover can be
borne that it is important that that
should be wooden. When more than
the woolen sheet is needed, then the
thin blanket comes into play; no cot
ton or linen should be used about the
sick, at least, I repeat, in Summer.
In Winter, when the nighttime COW
ering should be down quilt, the use
of cotton or linen sheets is less i'm
portant, though not to be advised.
Down quilts are so cheap these days
that there is no excuse for the sick be-
ing weighted to death with covering
as has often literally happened.
Curing by the laying on of hands is
something good deal simpler than
Christian science. Every nurse knows
something of how much pain can be
relieved by rubbing and by holding
hand on the suffering part. This is
too often regarded as temporary and
unimportant measure, and those who
would take much trouble and be at
much expense in some other way, get
out of the exertion of much rubbing
or laying on of hands. This is mis-
take; anything that relieves pain
without benumbing drugs is most
important measure. Pain is poison in
the system; the human hand is won,
derful instrument for the relief of
pain, even without the expert training
of the massageur. Try seeing what
you can do with it.-[New York Re-