In the afternoon again, without care, the patient whose vital powers
have then risen often finds the room as close and oppressive as he found
it cold in the morning. Yet the nurse will be terrified, if a window is
opened.[2]


[Sidenote: Open windows.]

I know an intelligent humane house surgeon who makes a practice of
keeping the ward windows open. The physicians and surgeons invariably
close them while going their rounds; and the house surgeon very properly
as invariably opens them whenever the doctors have turned their backs.

In a little book on nursing, published a short time ago, we are told,
that, "with proper care it is very seldom that the windows cannot be
opened for a few minutes twice in the day to admit fresh air from
without." I should think not; nor twice in the hour either. It only
shows how little the subject has been considered.


[Sidenote: What kind of warmth desirable.]

Of all methods of keeping patients warm the very worst certainly is to
depend for heat on the breath and bodies of the sick. I have known a
medical officer keep his ward windows hermetically closed. Thus exposing
the sick to all the dangers of an infected atmosphere, because he was
afraid that, by admitting fresh air, the temperature of the ward would
be too much lowered. This is a destructive fallacy.