Fever, or hospital gangrene, or pyaemia, or purulent
discharge of some kind may else supervene. Has she a case of compound
fracture, of amputation, or of erysipelas, it may depend very much on
how she looks upon the things enumerated in these notes, whether one or
other of these hospital diseases attacks her patient or not. If she
allows her ward to become filled with the peculiar close foetid smell, so
apt to be produced among surgical cases, especially where there is great
suppuration and discharge, she may see a vigorous patient in the prime
of life gradually sink and die where, according to all human
probability, he ought to have recovered. The surgical nurse must be ever
on the watch, ever on her guard, against want of cleanliness, foul air,
want of light, and of warmth.
Nevertheless let no one think that because _sanitary_ nursing is the
subject of these notes, therefore, what may be called the handicraft of
nursing is to be undervalued. A patient may be left to bleed to death in
a sanitary palace. Another who cannot move himself may die of bed-sores,
because the nurse does not know how to change and clean him, while he
has every requisite of air, light, and quiet.
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