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

In all well-regulated hospitals this ought to be, and generally is, attended to. But it is very generally neglected with private sick. Just as it is necessary to renew the air round a sick person frequently, to carry off morbid effluvia from the lungs and skin, by maintaining free ventilation, so is it necessary to keep the pores of the skin free from all obstructing excretions. The object, both of ventilation and of skin-cleanliness, is pretty much the same,--to wit, removing noxious matter from the system as rapidly as possible. Care should be taken in all these operations of sponging, washing, and cleansing the skin, not to expose too great a surface at once, so as to check the perspiration, which would renew the evil in another form. The various ways of washing the sick need not here be specified,--the less so as the doctors ought to say which is to be used. In several forms of diarrhoea, dysentery, &c., where the skin is hard and harsh, the relief afforded by washing with a great deal of soft soap is incalculable. In other cases, sponging with tepid soap and water, then with tepid water and drying with a hot towel will be ordered. Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face too, so much the better. One word as to cleanliness merely as cleanliness. [Sidenote: Steaming and rubbing the skin.]