a bed ever be higher than a sofa.
Otherwise the patient feels himself "out of humanity's reach;" he can
get at nothing for himself: he can move nothing for himself. If the
patient cannot turn, a table over the bed is a better thing. I need
hardly say that a patient's bed should never have its side against the
wall. The nurse must be able to get easily to both sides of the bed, and
to reach easily every part of the patient without stretching--a thing
impossible if the bed be either too wide or too high.

[Sidenote: Bed not to be too high.]

When I see a patient in a room nine or ten feet high upon a bed between
four and five feet high, with his head, when he is sitting up in bed,
actually within two or three feet of the ceiling, I ask myself, is this
expressly planned to produce that peculiarly distressing feeling common
to the sick, viz., as if the walls and ceiling were closing in upon
them, and they becoming sandwiches between floor and ceiling, which
imagination is not, indeed, here so far from the truth? If, over and
above this, the window stops short of the ceiling, then the patient's
head may literally be raised above the stratum of fresh air, even when
the window is open. Can human perversity any farther go, in unmaking the
process of restoration which God has made? The fact is, that the heads
of sleepers or of sick should never be higher than the throat of the
chimney, which ensures their being in the current of best air. And we
will not suppose it possible that you have closed your chimney with a
chimney-board.

If a bed is higher than a sofa, the difference of the fatigue of getting
in and out of bed will just make the difference, very often, to the
patient (who can get in and out of bed at all) of being able to take a
few minutes' exercise, either in the open air or in another room. It is
so very odd that people never think of this, or of how many more times a
patient who is in bed for the twenty-four hours is obliged to get in and
out of bed than they are, who only, it is to be hoped, get into bed once
and out of bed once during the twenty-four hours.

[Sidenote: Nor in a dark place.]

A patient's bed should always be in the lightest spot in the room; and
he should be able to see out of window.

[Sidenote: Nor a four poster with curtains.]

I need scarcely say that the old four-post bed with curtains is utterly
inadmissible, whether for sick or well. Hospital bedsteads are in many
respects ver