nd plain nourishing diet, such as the
patient desires, furnished, probably little more can be done, unless
more serious symptoms present themselves; in which case medical advice
will be sought.

2420. Under no circumstances is ventilation of the sick-room so
essential as in cases of febrile diseases, usually considered
infectious; such as typhus and puerperal fevers, influenza,
hooping-cough, small- and chicken-pox, scarlet fever, measles, and
erysipelas: all these are considered communicable through the air; but
there is little danger of infection being thus communicated, provided
the room is kept thoroughly ventilated. On the contrary, if this
essential be neglected, the power of infection is greatly increased and
concentrated in the confined and impure air; it settles upon the clothes
of the attendants and visitors, especially where they are of wool, and
is frequently communicated to other families in this manner.

2421. Under all circumstances, therefore, the sick-room should be kept
as fresh and sweet as the open air, while the temperature is kept up by
artificial heat, taking care that the fire burns clear, and gives out no
smoke into the room; that the room is perfectly clean, wiped over with a
damp cloth every day, if boarded; and swept, after sprinkling with damp
tea-leaves, or other aromatic leaves, if carpeted; that all utensils are
emptied and cleaned as soon as used, and not once in four-and-twenty
hours, as is sometimes done. "A slop-pail," Miss Nightingale says,
"should never enter a sick-room; everything should be carried direct to
the water-closet, emptied there, and brought up clean; in the best
hospitals the slop-pail is unknown." "I do not approve," says Miss
Nightingale, "of making housemaids of nurses,--that would be waste of
means; but I have seen surgical sisters, women whose hands were worth to
them two or three guineas a week, down on their knees, scouring a room
or hut, because they thought it was not fit for their patients: these
women had the true nurse spirit."

2422. Bad smells are sometimes met by sprinkling a little liquid
chloride of lime on the floor; fumigation by burning pastiles is also a
common expedient for the purification of the sick-room. They are useful,
but only in the sense hinted at by the medical lecturer, who commenced
his lecture thus:--"Fumigations, gentlemen, are of essential importance;
they make so abominable a smell, that they compel you to open the
windows and a