d should be narrow, and a mattress is much to be
preferred to a feather bed. The mattress should be protected by a rubber
sheet or newspaper pads; oil-cloth cracks and wrinkles too badly to be of
service for this purpose. The rubber sheet should of course be kept under
the sheet nearest the mattress. The cover should consist of a sheet which
is long enough to fold back at the head over the other covering for some
distance, and blankets should be used for warmth in preference to quilts.
The bed should be kept scrupulously clean, and the linen and covering
should be removed when soiled. The nurse should see to it that
bread-crumbs do not remain in the bed.

In removing soiled bed-clothes the following plan is the one usually
adopted. The patient is moved to one side of the bed as near the edge as
possible, and the sheet beneath him loosened at the head and the foot and
on the opposite side; it is then rolled up toward the patient and pushed
well up under him, leaving the side of the bed opposite to that upon
which he is lying bare; upon this the new sheet is placed, which is then
tucked under the edges of the mattress, and the patient rolls or is
pulled back over on it. The soiled sheet is then removed and the edges of
the fresh one pulled over the portions of the bed still uncovered, and
secured in the usual way.

_General Precautions._--The room should also be kept scrupulously clean;
all sweepings should be burned. Soiled linen and all excretions from the
patient should be promptly removed, and if the latter need not be
preserved for the inspection of the physician, should be at once
disinfected and properly disposed of. Milk and other food should not be
left in the sick room; and soiled glasses and dishes should be removed
and washed at once in boiling water.

Persons who are ill should not be allowed to have company. There is
nothing more important in connection with the looking after patients with
infectious diseases than this precaution. The writer has often seen in
the country districts patients with typhoid fever and other infectious
diseases surrounded by the neighbors from miles around,--the entire
company often eating and drinking in the room occupied by the afflicted
person. The strain that results on the patient from a practice of this
kind might well in many cases have fatal consequences, and there is no
question whatever that many diseases, particularly typhoid fever, are
scattered in this way from house