Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on nursing : what it is, and what it is not. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    room, excpting liim, wliicli can give off effluvia or moist- ure. Out of all damp towels, &c., which, become dry in the room, the damp, of course, goes into the patient's air. Yet this of course seems as little thought of, as if it were an obsolete fiction. How very seldom you see a nurse who acknowledges by her practice that nothing at all ought to be aired in the patient's room, that nothing at all ought to be cooked at the patient's fire! Indeed the arrangements often make this rule impossible to ob- serve. If the nurse be a very careful one, she will, when the patient leaves his bed, but not his room, open the sheets wide, and throw the bed-clothes back, in order to air his bed. And she will spread the wet towels or flannels care- fully out upon a horse, in order to dry them. Now either these bed-clothes and towels are not dried and aired, or they dry and air themselves into the patient's air. And whether the damp and effluvia do him most harm in his air or in his bed, I leave to you to determine, for I can- not. Even in health people cannot repeatedly breathe air Effluvia in which they live with impunity, on account of its be- i^^ ^^c^g- coming charged with unwholesome matter from the lungs and skin. In disease where everything given off from the body is highly noxious and dangerous, not only must there be plenty of ventilation to carry off the effluvia, but everything which the patient passes must be instantly re- moved away, as being more noxious than even the ema- nations from the sick. Of the fatal effects of the effluvia from the excreta it would seem unnecessary to speak, were they not so con- stantly neglected. Concealing the utensils behind the vallance to the bed seems aU the precaution which is