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

That which, however, above all, is known to injure children seriously is foul air, and most seriously at night. Keeping the rooms where they sleep tight shut up, is destruction to them. And, if the child's breathing be disordered by disease, a few hours only of such foul air may endanger its life, even where no inconvenience is felt by grown-up persons in the same room. The following passages, taken out of an excellent "Lecture on Sudden Death in Infancy and Childhood," just published, show the vital importance of careful nursing of children. "In the great majority of instances, when death suddenly befalls the infant or young child, it is an accident; it is not a necessary result of any disease from which it is suffering." It may be here added, that it would be very desirable to know how often death is, with adults, "not a necessary, inevitable result of any disease." Omit the word "sudden;" (for sudden death is comparatively rare in middle age;) and the sentence is almost equally true for all ages. The following causes of "accidental" death in sick children are enumerated:--"Sudden noises, which startle--a rapid change of temperature, which chills the surface, though only for a moment--a rude awakening from sleep--or even an over-hasty, or an overfull meal"--"any sudden impression on the nervous system--any hasty alteration of posture--in short, any cause whatever by which the respiratory process may be disturbed." It may again be added, that, with very weak adult patients, these causes are also (not often "suddenly fatal," it is true, but) very much oftener than is at all generally known, irreparable in their consequences.