ertain green papers arsenic is used. Now
in the very dust even, which is lying about in rooms hung with this kind
of green paper, arsenic has been distinctly detected. You see your dust
is anything but harmless; yet you will let such dust lie about your
ledges for months, your rooms for ever.

Again, the fire fills the room with coal-dust.

[Sidenote: Dirty air from the carpet.]

3. Dirty air coming from the carpet. Above all, take care of the
carpets, that the animal dirt left there by the feet of visitors does
not stay there. Floors, unless the grain is filled up and polished, are
just as bad. The smell from the floor of a school-room or ward, when any
moisture brings out the organic matter by which it is saturated, might
alone be enough to warn us of the mischief that is going on.

[Sidenote: Remedies.]

The outer air, then, can only be kept clean by sanitary improvements,
and by consuming smoke. The expense in soap, which this single
improvement would save, is quite incalculable.

The inside air can only be kept clean by excessive care in the ways
mentioned above--to rid the walls, carpets, furniture, ledges, &c., of
the organic matter and dust--dust consisting greatly of this organic
matter--with which they become saturated, and which is what really makes
the room musty.

Without cleanliness, you cannot have all the effect of ventilation;
without ventilation, you can have no thorough cleanliness.

Very few people, be they of what class they may, have any idea of the
exquisite cleanliness required in the sick-room. For much of what I have
said applies less to the hospital than to the private sick-room. The
smoky chimney, the dusty furniture, the utensils emptied but once a day,
often keep the air of the sick constantly dirty in the best private
houses.

The well have a curious habit of forgetting that what is to them but a
trifling inconvenience, to be patiently "put up" with, is to the sick a
source of suffering, delaying recovery, if not actually hastening death.
The well are scarcely ever more than eight hours, at most, in the same
room. Some change they can always make, if only for a few minutes. Even
during the supposed eight hours, they can change their posture or their
position in the room. But the sick man who never leaves his bed, who
cannot change by any movement of his own his air, or his light, or his
warmth; who cannot obtain quiet, or get out of the smoke, or the smell,
or the dust; he i