Necessities for the Sick-Room

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 15, 1906

Necessities for the Sick-Room

A SET of dishes should be selected for the sick-room, and these should be washed by the nurse, and never mixed with the dishes used by the family. The nurse should disinfect all bed and body linen used by the patient, and also keep the sick-room and all its belongings free from infection. Nothing contaminates the atmosphere more than dust, and nothing creates worse air-dust contamination than the spilling of foul discharges on floors, rugs, and bed and body linen, and allowing them to dry. All such foul matter should be wiped up at once with a moist disinfected cloth, which should be burned. A broom is out of place in a sick-room. It only scatters the dust into the air. The only safe disposal of the refuse from a quarantined room is cremation. The nurse in charge of a case of contagious disease should avoid direct contact with other members of the family, especially children. If she must mingle with others, she should have a special gown for the sick, which should be discarded with her cap on coming out, and always worn in the room, and she should disinfect her hands before touching anything outside of the room. All these simple, commonplace quarantine regulations, faithfully carried out, would save thousands of lives yearly among the children of the land, and also greatly lessen the cost to common people for illness and funeral expenses. Nothing would pay better than for the heads of all American households to be their own health officers.—Dr. Kate Lindsay, in the October Housekeeper.