murderers, in the musty unaired unsunned room, the scarlet fever which
is behind the door, or the fever and hospital gangrene which are
stalking among the crowded beds of a hospital ward, we say, "It's all
right."


[Sidenote: Without chill.]

With a proper supply of windows, and a proper supply of fuel in open
fire places, fresh air is comparatively easy to secure when your patient
or patients are in bed. Never be afraid of open windows then. People
don't catch cold in bed. This is a popular fallacy. With proper
bed-clothes and hot bottles, if necessary, you can always keep a patient
warm in bed, and well ventilate him at the same time.

But a careless nurse, be her rank and education what it may, will stop
up every cranny and keep a hot-house heat when her patient is in bed,--
and, if he is able to get up, leave him comparatively unprotected. The
time when people take cold (and there are many ways of taking cold,
besides a cold in the nose,) is when they first get up after the
two-fold exhaustion of dressing and of having had the skin relaxed by
many hours, perhaps days, in bed, and thereby rendered more incapable of
re-action. Then the same temperature which refreshes the patient in bed
may destroy the patient just risen. And common sense will point out,
that, while purity of air is essential, a temperature must be secured
which shall not chill the patient. Otherwise the best that can be
expected will be a feverish re-action.

To have the air within as pure as the air without, it is not necessary,
as often appears to be thought, to make it as cold.