hall or corridor.

Again, a thing I have often seen both in private houses and
institutions. A room remains uninhabited; the fire place is carefully
fastened up with a board; the windows are never opened; probably the
shutters are kept always shut; perhaps some kind of stores are kept in
the room; no breath of fresh air can by possibility enter into that
room, nor any ray of sun. The air is as stagnant, musty, and corrupt as
it can by possibility be made. It is quite ripe to breed small-pox,
scarlet fever, diphtheria, or anything else you please.[2]

Yet the nursery, ward, or sick room adjoining will positively be aired
(?) by having the door opened into that room. Or children will be put
into that room, without previous preparation, to sleep.

A short time ago a man walked into a back-kitchen in Queen square, and
cut the throat of a poor consumptive creature, sitting by the fire. The
murderer did not deny the act, but simply said, "It's all right." Of
course he was mad.

But in our case, the extraordinary thing is that the victim says, "It's
all right," and that we are not mad. Yet, although we "nose" the
murderers, in the musty unaired unsunned room, the scarlet fever which
is behind the door, or the fever and hospital gangrene which are
stalking among the crowded beds of a hospital ward, we say, "It's all
right."

[Sidenote: Without chill.]

With a proper supply of windows, and a proper supply of fuel in open
fire places, fresh air is comparatively easy to secure when your patient
or patients are in bed. Never be afraid of open windows then. People
don't catch cold in bed. This is a popular fallacy. With proper
bed-clothes and hot bottles, if necessary, you can always keep a patient
warm in bed, and well ventilate him at the same time.

But a careless nurse, be her rank and education what it may, will stop
up every cranny and keep a hot-house heat when her patient is in
bed,--and, if he is able to get up, leave him comparatively unprotected.
The time when people take cold (and there are many ways of taking cold,
besides a cold in the nose,) is when they first get up after the
two-fold exhaustion of dressing and of having had the skin relaxed by
many hours, perhaps days, in bed, and thereby rendered more incapable of
re-action. Then the same temperature which refreshes the patient in bed
may destroy the patient just risen. And common sense will point out
that, while purity of air is essential, a temperature m