Chapter 4
When severe sickness enters a family, there is great need of each
member giving strict attention to personal cleanliness, and diet, to
preserve themselves in a healthful condition, and by thus doing, fortify
themselves against disease. It is also of the greatest importance that
the sick-room, from the first, be properly ventilated. This will be
beneficial to the afflicted, and highly necessary to keep those well who
are compelled to remain a length of time in the sick-room.
It is of great value to the sick to have an even temperature in
the room. This cannot always be correctly determined, if left to the
judgment of attendants, for they may not be the best judges of a right
temperature. And some persons require more heat than others, and
would be only comfortable in a room which to another would be
uncomfortably warm. And if each of these are at liberty to arrange
the fires, to suit their ideas of proper heat, the atmosphere in the sick-
room will be anything but regular. Sometimes it will be distressingly
warm for the patient; at another time too cold, which will have a most
injurious effect upon the sick. The friends of the sick, or attendants,
who through anxiety, and watching, are deprived of sleep, and who
are suddenly awakened in the night from sleep to attend in the sick-
room, are liable to chilliness. Such are not correct thermometers of
the healthful temperature of a sick-room. These things may appear of
small account, but they have very much to do with the recovery of the
sick. In many instances life has been periled by extreme changes of
the temperature of the sick-room.
In pleasant weather the sick in no case should be deprived of a full
supply of fresh air. Their rooms may not always be so constructed
as to allow the windows or doors open in their rooms, without the
draught coming directly upon them, and exposing them to take cold.
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In such cases windows and doors should be opened in an adjoining
room, and thus let the fresh air enter the room occupied by the sick.
Fresh air will prove more beneficial to the sick than medicine, and is
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