pox? Does not the popular idea of
"infection" involve that people should take greater care of themselves
than of the patient? that, for instance, it is safer not to be too much
with the patient, not to attend too much to his wants? Perhaps the best
illustration of the utter absurdity of this view of duty in attending on
"infectious" diseases is afforded by what was very recently the
practice, if it is not so even now, in some of the European
lazarets--in which the plague-patient used to be condemned to the
horrors of filth, overcrowding, and want of ventilation, while the
medical attendant was ordered to examine the patient's tongue through an
opera-glass and to toss him a lancet to open his abscesses with!

True nursing ignores infection, except to prevent it. Cleanliness and
fresh air from open windows, with unremitting attention to the patient,
are the only defence a true nurse either asks or needs.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against
infection.

[Sidenote: Why must children have measles, &c.?]

There are not a few popular opinions, in regard to which it is useful at
times to ask a question or two. For example, it is commonly thought that
children must have what are commonly called "children's epidemics,"
"current contagions," &c., in other words, that they are born to have
measles, hooping-cough, perhaps even scarlet fever, just as they are
born to cut their teeth, if they live.

Now, do tell us, why must a child have measles?

Oh because, you say, we cannot keep it from infection--other children
have measles--and it must take them--and it is safer that it should.

But why must other children have measles? And if they have, why must
yours have them too?

If you believed in and observed the laws for preserving the health of
houses which inculcate cleanliness, ventilation, white-washing, and
other means, and which, by the way, _are laws_, as implicitly as you
believe in the popular opinion, for it is nothing more than an opinion,
that your child must have children's epidemics, don't you think that
upon the whole your child would be more likely to escape altogether?

III. PETTY MANAGEMENT.

[Sidenote: Petty management.]

All the results of good nursing, as detailed in these notes, may be
spoiled or utterly negatived by one defect, viz.: in petty management,
or, in other words, by not knowing how to manage that what you do when
you are there, shall be done when