s annoying to patients.
Elaborate, carved, or upholstered furniture is unsuitable in a sick
room, but if it must be used it should have washable covers.

Other desirable articles of furniture are a couch, screen, foot-stool
and a second, larger table. In few cases, if any, is anything further
really necessary, although patients frequently desire special articles
to which there can be no objection.

Most ornaments add much work and little beauty, and have no place in a
sick-room. No heavy unwashable curtains or hangings should be allowed,
but simple washable curtains and clean white covers for the tables and
dresser are desirable. Pictures, if suitable, give much pleasure, but
must be used with discretion. It goes without saying that the subjects
should be pleasant, but not everyone realizes that complicated subjects
are undesirable and that pictures of people or things in motion should
be avoided; patients are sometimes worried to see motion that is forever
incomplete.

Flowers give great pleasure to the sick by adding color and variety and
interest to their surroundings. They should be carefully tended and
given fresh water daily. Fading flowers and forlorn plants should be
removed from the sick room, and those having strong, heavy odors should
not even be admitted. They do not need to be very many or very
expensive; indeed, a potted plant or a few cut flowers are often more
acceptable than the great masses of costly flowers that are daily
brought to the private wards of hospitals.

VENTILATION.--A patient needs fresh air certainly as much as a well
person, and probably even more. His room should be thoroughly ventilated
night and day. A fireplace makes the problem easier, but in most cases
an open window is the main dependence. It should be possible to open
windows at the top as well as at the bottom, and the patient may be
protected from a direct draught by a screen, or by a sheet stretched
along the side of the bed and fastened at the head and foot by tying it
around the posts.

Ventilating a room without subjecting the patient to draughts is not
always easy. One method is to insert a board three or four inches high
under the lower sash so that air is admitted between the two sashes.
Another way to ventilate without causing a draught is to remove one or
two panes of glass and tack cheese cloth over the opening; or to tack
cheese cloth to the lower edge of the upper window casing and to the
upper edge of the up