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Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1920

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

'" And the dormitories of our
great boarding schools! Scarlet fever would be no more ascribed to
contagion, but to its right cause, the air-test standing at "Foul."
We should hear no longer of "Mysterious Dispensations," and of "Plague
and Pestilence," being "in God's hands," when, so far as we know, He has
put them into our own. The little air-test would both betray the cause
of these "mysterious pestilences," and call upon us to remedy it.
[5] With private sick, I think, but certainly with hospital sick, the
nurse should never be satisfied as to the freshness of their atmosphere,
unless she can feel the air gently moving over her face, when still.
But it is often observed that nurses who make the greatest outcry
against open windows are those who take the least pains to prevent
dangerous draughts. The door of the patients' room or ward _must_
sometimes stand open to allow of persons passing in and out, or heavy
things being carried in and out. The careful nurse will keep the door
shut while she shuts the windows, and then, and not before, set the door
open, so that a patient may not be left sitting up in bed, perhaps in a
profuse perspiration, directly in the draught between the open door and
window.


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