aught between the open door and
window. Neither, of course, should a patient, while being washed or in
any way exposed, remain in the draught of an open window or door.

[6]

[Sidenote: Don't make your sick-room into a sewer.]

But never, never should the possession of this indispensable lid confirm
you in the abominable practice of letting the chamber utensil remain in
a patient's room unemptied, except once in the 24 hours, i.e., when
the bed is made. Yes, impossible as it may appear, I have known the best
and most attentive nurses guilty of this; aye, and have known, too, a
patient afflicted with severe diarrhoea for ten days, and the nurse (a
very good one) not know of it, because the chamber utensil (one with a
lid) was emptied only once in the 24 hours, and that by the housemaid
who came in and made the patient's bed every evening. As well might you
have a sewer under the room, or think that in a water closet the plug
need be pulled up but once a day. Also take care that your _lid_, as
well as your utensil, be always thoroughly rinsed.

If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient,
"because it is not her business," I should say that nursing was not her
calling. I have seen surgical "sisters," women whose hands were worth to
them two or three guineas a-week, down upon their knees scouring a room
or hut, because they thought it otherwise not fit for their patients to
go into. I am far from wishing nurses to scour. It is a waste of power.
But I do say that these women had the true nurse-calling--the good of
their sick first, and second only the consideration what it was their
"place" to do--and that women who wait for the housemaid to do this, or
for the charwoman to do that, when their patients are suffering, have
not the _making_ of a nurse in them.

[7]

[Sidenote: Health of carriages.]

The health of carriages, especially close carriages, is not of
sufficient universal importance to mention here, otherwise than
cursorily. Children, who are always the most delicate test of sanitary
conditions, generally cannot enter a close carriage without being
sick--and very lucky for them that it is so. A close carriage, with the
horse-hair cushions and linings always saturated with organic matter, if
to this be added the windows up, is one of the most unhealthy of human
receptacles. The idea of taking an _airing_ in it is something
preposterous. Dr. Angus Smith has shown that a crowded railway carri