Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    642/896 (page 176)
    window opens both at top and bottom. Be sure that you get plenty of sun and fresh air. If the window has curtains remove them. It may be, however, that you have only one room, and that the window will not open. Knock out a pane of glass and across the opening so made stretch a piece of thin muslin, or better still, of perforated zinc. Your next endeavour ought to be to make the room as clean as soap and water can make it. You must brush the walls down and scrub the floor thoroughly clean. To conduce to the freshness and convenience of the room, it will be necessary to remove all the furniture excepting only that which you absolutely require. The fewer things you have in a sick room the better. Even in midsummer a small fire is useful—it helps to ventilate the room, and keep the air fresh. If you do not have a fire, then be sure to leave the chimney of the room open. Do not close the damper, nor stuff the chimney with straw. If your patient suffer from his head or his eyes, do not let him lie in a blaze of sun-shine or gas-light; but tack a piece of dark stuff across the window, dark blue or green being always better than white. Air of Boom.—The air of the sick room should be kept as nearly as possible at a uniform temperature, always about the same warmth. Nothing can be worse than to have it sometimes very hot, and at other times very cold. Try to avoid having at one moment a large fire and the patient almost suffocated, and at another time the doors and windows open, and the patient shiver- ing with cold. To maintain an equable temperature is, I am well aware, by no means an easy matter, especially in a small room; but care and attention will do a great deal to render this attain- able. In respect of this point there is one thing to which I should like to draw your attention, namely, that the early morning hours, between two and seven A.M., are the coldest, and the period at which the vital powers are at their lowest, and, therefore, the time at which serious changes, and frequently death take place. During these hours the patient must be carefully watched, and the heat maintained by extra clothing, hot bottles, and warm drinks, and you must be careful not to allow the fire to burn low. The