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Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1920

"Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not"

These flakes are what require
removing. And you can really keep yourself cleaner with a tumbler of hot
water and a rough towel and rubbing, than with a whole apparatus of bath
and soap and sponge, without rubbing. It is quite nonsense to say that
anybody need be dirty. Patients have been kept as clean by these means
on a long voyage, when a basin full of water could not be afforded, and
when they could not be moved out of their berths, as if all the
appurtenances of home had been at hand.
Washing, however, with a large quantity of water has quite other effects
than those of mere cleanliness. The skin absorbs the water and becomes
softer and more perspirable. To wash with soap and soft water is,
therefore, desirable from other points of view than that of cleanliness.


XII. CHATTERING HOPES AND ADVICES.

[Sidenote: Advising the sick.]
The sick man to his advisers.
"My advisers! Their name is legion. * * * Somehow or other, it seems a
provision of the universal destinies, that every man, woman, and child
should consider him, her, or itself privileged especially to advise me.


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