room is more restful and less disturbing than a
strange place, but if it serves as a work room as well as a bed room, it
may easily be the worst place during sickness. The sight of a desk piled
high with papers or a basket overflowing with accumulations of family
mending may actually delay recovery; even the room itself may constantly
suggest work, and work necessarily left undone. The essential thing to
remember is that mental rest is no less important than physical, and
every effort should be made to secure them both.

FURNISHING.--Superfluous articles add to the care of a sick room, and in
consequence they should be removed at the outset. All the furnishings
that remain should be easy to clean, but it is not necessary for a sick
room to look bare and desolate.

The woodwork as in any other room should have a hard finish, and angles
and corners that harbor dust should be as few as possible. Hard wood
floors without cracks are best from the point of view of cleanliness and
convenience. A few light, washable rugs make the best floor covering,
but very small rugs on highly polished floors slide easily and are
decidedly dangerous. Carpets diminish noise, but are objectionable from
every other point of view.

In furnishing houses people ought to realize more frequently than they
do how greatly nervous fatigue may be increased by ill chosen wall
coverings. Plain papers or tinted walls are best for bed rooms and the
color should not be harsh or striking; soft gray, green, or buff is
good. The design is no less important than the color; a design that on
casual inspection appears quite harmless may become an instrument of
torture to a person unable to escape from it for a single hour. Weak or
nervous patients sometimes become quite exhausted from attempting to
follow an intricate pattern, or from counting over and over a design
that is frequently repeated on the wall. If the patient sees grotesque
faces and figures in the design the paper is more objectionable still.

Necessary furniture includes the bed, which will be discussed in detail
later, a small table to stand by the head of the bed, a dresser, two
chairs, and a wall thermometer. If the patient is able to sit up three
chairs are needed, of which one should be an armchair with a high back.
No rocking chair should be allowed in the room unless the patient
himself prefers to sit in one; no one else should be allowed to rock in
the room, since the motion is almost alway