FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87  
88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  
e. You can always moderate the light by blinds and curtains. Heavy, thick, dark window or bed curtains should, however, hardly ever be used for any kind of sick in this country. A light white curtain at the head of the bed is, in general, all that is necessary, and a green blind to the window, to be drawn down only when necessary. [Sidenote: Without sunlight, we degenerate body and mind.] One of the greatest observers of human things (not physiological), says, in another language, "Where there is sun there is thought." All physiology goes to confirm this. Where is the shady side of deep vallies, there is cretinism. Where are cellars and the unsunned sides of narrow streets, there is the degeneracy and weakliness of the human race--mind and body equally degenerating. Put the pale withering plant and human being into the sun, and, if not too far gone, each will recover health and spirit. [Sidenote: Almost all patients lie with their faces to the light.] It is a curious thing to observe how almost all patients lie with their faces turned to the light, exactly as plants always make their way towards the light; a patient will even complain that it gives him pain "lying on that side." "Then why _do_ you lie on that side?" He does not know,--but we do. It is because it is the side towards the window. A fashionable physician has recently published in a government report that he always turns his patient's faces from the light. Yes, but nature is stronger than fashionable physicians, and depend upon it she turns the faces back and _towards_ such light as she can get. Walk through the wards of a hospital, remember the bed sides of private patients you have seen, and count how many sick you ever saw lying with their faces towards the wall. X. CLEANLINESS OF ROOMS AND WALLS. [Sidenote: Cleanliness of carpets and furniture.] It cannot be necessary to tell a nurse that she should be clean, or that she should keep her patient clean,--seeing that the greater part of nursing consists in preserving cleanliness. No ventilation can freshen a room or ward where the most scrupulous cleanliness is not observed. Unless the wind be blowing through the windows at the rate of twenty miles an hour, dusty carpets, dirty wainscots, musty curtains and furniture, will infallibly produce a close smell. I have lived in a large and expensively furnished London house, where the only constant inmate in two very lofty rooms, with
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87  
88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  



Top keywords:

patient

 

patients

 

Sidenote

 

curtains

 

window

 

carpets

 

furniture

 

cleanliness

 
fashionable
 

private


nature

 

CLEANLINESS

 
stronger
 
remember
 

hospital

 

report

 

government

 

depend

 

physicians

 

ventilation


infallibly
 

produce

 

wainscots

 
twenty
 

inmate

 

constant

 

expensively

 

furnished

 

London

 

windows


greater

 

nursing

 

Cleanliness

 
consists
 

preserving

 
observed
 

scrupulous

 
Unless
 
blowing
 

published


freshen
 

turned

 
observers
 

things

 

physiological

 

greatest

 

Without

 

sunlight

 
degenerate
 

language