The Sick-Room by Christian at Work

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1879

The Sick-Room.

By Christian at Work

PURE air in a sick-room is of the utmost importance. In illness, the poisoned body is desperately trying to throw off, through lungs, skin, and in every possible way, the noxious materials that have done the mischief. Bad air, and dirty or saturated bed clothes, increase the difficulty at the very time when the weakened powers need all the help they can get. Avoid air from kitchen or close closets. Outside air is the best, but, if needed, there should be a fire in the room to take off the chill. A cold is rarely taken in bed, with the bed clothes well tucked in, but oftener when getting up out of a warm bed when the skin is relaxed. Of course anything like a "chill" should be avoided, and it is not well to allow a draught or current of air to pass directly over the bed of the patient.

In disease less heat is produced by the body than in health. This decline occurs even in summer, and is usually most evident in the early morning, when the vital powers slacken, the food of the previous day having been exhausted. The sick should be watched between midnight and ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, and if any decline in heat is noticed, it should be supplied by jugs of hot water.

A sick-room should above all be quiet. Any rustling sound, such as that of a silk dress or shoes which creak, should be entirely avoided. If it is necessary to put coal on the fire, drop it on quietly in small paper sacks, or rolled in paper slightly dampened. Visitors should never be admitted to a sick-room. The necessary attendants are usually a sufficient annoyance to a weak patient, and many a tombstone might truthfully and appropriately be inscribed, "Talked to death by well-meaning friends." It is not generally the loudness of a noise that disturbs the sick, but the sound that produces expectation of something to happen. Some cannot bear any noise. Anything that suddenly awakens is injurious. Never awaken a sleeping patient unless ordered to do so by the physician. In sickness the brain is weakened with the rest of the body, and sleep strengthens it. If rest is interrupted soon after it is begun, the brain is weakened so much the more, and the patient becomes irritable and wakeful. If sleep lasts longer, he falls asleep again more readily. Never speak within the hearing of the sick in tones which cannot be fully understood. An occasional word, or murmur of conversation, or whisper, is intolerable, and occasions needless apprehension.—Christian at Work.