ven occur to her. Besides this, the most
dangerous effluvia we know of are from the excreta of the sick--these
are placed, at least temporarily, where they must throw their effluvia
into the under side of the bed, and the space under the bed is never
aired; it cannot be, with our arrangements. Must not such a bed be
always saturated, and be always the means of re-introducing into the
system of the unfortunate patient who lies in it, that excrementitious
matter to eliminate which from the body nature had expressly appointed
the disease?

My heart always sinks within me when I hear the good house-wife, of
every class, say, "I assure you the bed has been well slept in," and I
can only hope it is not true. What? is the bed already saturated with
somebody else's damp before my patient comes to exhale in it his own
damp? Has it not had a single chance to be aired? No, not one. "It has
been slept in every night."

[Sidenote: Iron spring bedsteads the best.]

[Sidenote: Comfort and cleanliness of _two_ beds.]

The only way of really nursing a real patient is to have an _iron_
bedstead, with rheocline springs, which are permeable by the air up to
the very mattress (no vallance, of course), the mattress to be a thin
hair one; the bed to be not above 3-1/2 feet wide. If the patient be
entirely confined to his bed, there should be _two_ such bedsteads; each
bed to be "made" with mattress, sheets, blankets, &c., complete--the
patient to pass twelve hours in each bed; on no account to carry his
sheets with him. The whole of the bedding to be hung up to air for each
intermediate twelve hours. Of course there are many cases where this
cannot be done at all--many more where only an approach to it can be
made. I am indicating the ideal of nursing, and what I have actually had
done. But about the kind of bedstead there can be no doubt, whether
there be one or two provided.

[Sidenote: Bed not to be too wide.]

There is a prejudice in favour of a wide bed--I believe it to be a
prejudice. All the refreshment of moving a patient from one side to the
other of his bed is far more effectually secured by putting him into a
fresh bed; and a patient who is really very ill does not stray far in
bed. But it is said there is no room to put a tray down on a narrow bed.
No good nurse will ever put a tray on a bed at all. If the patient can
turn on his side, he will eat more comfortably from a bed-side table;
and on no account whatever should