[Sidenote:  Air from the outside.  Open your windows, shut your doors.]

Always air your room, then, from the outside air, if possible.  Windows are made to open; doors are made to shut—­a truth which seems extremely difficult of apprehension.  I have seen a careful nurse airing her patient’s room through the door, near to which were two gaslights, (each of which consumes as much air as eleven men), a kitchen, a corridor, the composition of the atmosphere in which consisted of gas, paint, foul air, never changed, full of effluvia, including a current of sewer air from an ill-placed sink, ascending in a continual stream by a well-staircase, and discharging themselves constantly into the patient’s room.  The window of the said room, if opened, was all that was desirable to air it.  Every room must be aired from without—­every passage from without.  But the fewer passages there are in a hospital the better.

[Sidenote:  Smoke.]

If we are to preserve the air within as pure as the air without, it is needless to say that the chimney must not smoke.  Almost all smoky chimneys can be cured—­from the bottom, not from the top.  Often it is only necessary to have an inlet for air to supply the fire, which is feeding itself, for want of this, from its own chimney.  On the other hand, almost all chimneys can be made to smoke by a careless nurse, who lets the fire get low and then overwhelms it with coal; not, as we verily believe, in order to spare herself trouble, (for very rare is unkindness to the sick), but from not thinking what she is about.

[Sidenote:  Airing damp things in a patient’s room.]

In laying down the principle that the first object of the nurse must be to keep the air breathed by her patient as pure as the air without, it must not be forgotten that everything in the room which can give off effluvia, besides the patient, evaporates itself into his air.  And it follows that there ought to be nothing in the room, excepting him, which can give off effluvia or moisture.  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 observe.

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 carefully 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 cannot.