FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE ON DARK ROOMS.—Florence Nightingale's "Notes on Nursing" contain the following useful hints:
A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth, and promotes scrofula, rickets, etc., among children. People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill they cannot get well again in it. Three, out of many negligences and ignorances in managing the health of houses generally, I will here mention, as specimens. 1. That the female head in charge of any building does not think it necessary to visit every hole and corner of it, every day. How can she expect that those under her will be more careful to maintain her house in a healthy condition than she who is in charge of it? 2. That it is not considered essential to air, to sun, and clean rooms while uninhabited, which is simply ignoring the first elementary notion of sanitary things, and laying the ground for all kinds of diseases. 3. That one window is considered enough to air a room. Don't imagine that if you who are in charge don't look to all these things yourself, those under you will be more careful than you are. It appears as if the part of the mistress, was to complain of her servants and to accept their excuse—not to show them how there need be neither complaints nor excuses made.