Very few people, be they of what class they may, have any idea of the exquisite cleanliness required in the sick-room.  For much of what I have said applies less to the hospital than to the private sick-room.  The smoky chimney, the dusty furniture, the utensils emptied but once a day, often keep the air of the sick constantly dirty in the best private houses.

The well have a curious habit of forgetting that what is to them but a trifling inconvenience, to be patiently “put up” with, is to the sick a source of suffering, delaying recovery, if not actually hastening death.  The well are scarcely ever more than eight hours, at most, in the same room.  Some change they can always make, if only for a few minutes.  Even during the supposed eight hours, they can change their posture or their position in the room.  But the sick man who never leaves his bed, who cannot change by any movement of his own his air, or his light, or his warmth; who cannot obtain quiet, or get out of the smoke, or the smell, or the dust; he is really poisoned or depressed by what is to you the merest trifle.

“What can’t be cured must be endured,” is the very worst and most dangerous maxim for a nurse which ever was made.  Patience and resignation in her are but other words for carelessness or indifference —­contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable, if in regard to her sick.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] [Sidenote:  How a room is dusted.]

If you like to clean your furniture by laying out your clean clothes upon your dirty chairs or sofa, this is one way certainly of doing it.  Having witnessed the morning process called “tidying the room,” for many years, and with ever-increasing astonishment, I can describe what it is.  From the chairs, tables, or sofa, upon which the “things” have lain during the night, and which are therefore comparatively clean from dust or blacks, the poor “things” having “caught” it, they are removed to other chairs, tables, sofas, upon which you could write your name with your finger in the dust or blacks.  The other side of the “things” is therefore now evenly dirtied or dusted.  The housemaid then flaps everything, or some things, not out of her reach, with a thing called a duster—­the dust flies up, then re-settles more equally than it lay before the operation.  The room has now been “put to rights.”

[2] [Sidenote:  Atmosphere in painted and papered rooms quite distinguishable.]

I am sure that a person who has accustomed her senses to compare atmospheres proper and improper, for the sick and for children, could tell, blindfold, the difference of the air in old painted and in old papered rooms, coeteris paribus. The latter will always be dusty, even with all the windows open.

[3] [Sidenote:  How to keep your wall clean at the expense of your clothes.]

If you like to wipe your dirty door, or some portion of your dirty wall, by hanging up your clean gown or shawl against it on a peg, this is one way certainly, and the most usual way, and generally the only way of cleaning either door or wall in a bed room!