Your ShelfYour Projects

Damp Beds

20%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1863

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 22, No. 23.

Read the full edition

Damp Beds.

PROBABLY there is nothing that the traveling preacher meets with that is more injurious to health than damp beds. He is generally put into the spare bed, that is not regularly slept in, which may be damp from several causes.
1. The windows and shutters of that spare room may be kept closed, so that in damp weather in summer or in winter the room and bed will be more or less damp, especially if the house be shaded with trees. We would recommend, first, cut down the trees around the house and let in the sun; second, open the shutters and windows and thoroughly air every room in the house every day.
2. Sheets may be put on the bed taken from a drawer in the room where there is no fire, where they have been growing more damp ever since they were ironed and put away not thoroughly aired. We like the wet sheet pack; but to put the weary and perhaps feeble preacher into damp sheets for all night, is slow murder.
3. The entire bed may be damp in some houses from frost and damp penetrating the walls. In this case a fire is sometimes kindled in the room for the first time in a month just before the minister retires, which in cold weather melts the frost and draws out the wet from the wall, so that coverlids and sheets are nearly as wet as if taken from the wash tub. The fire in this case only heats and spoils the air, so that while he is chilled in a damp bed, his wearied and perhaps feeble lungs are choked with a heated atmosphere. We recommend in this case that the fire be built in season to thoroughly dry the room, and that the entire bed be dried thoroughly, and that when you take the minister to his room, he find all dry, the fire out, and windows up, filling his room with the sweet air of heaven. Then he can adjust windows as the weather and his case requires. You who see our preachers feeble, suffering with colds, coughs, headaches, cramps, neuralgia, rheumatism, &c., may understand that one of the greatest causes is sleeping in damp beds.