Page:Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not.djvu/48

24 to inquire what is the uniform cause of these general "whitlows," but to stifle all inquiry. In what sense is "sickness" being "always there," a justification of its being "there" at all?

I will tell you what was the cause of this hospital pyæmia being in that large private house. It was that the sewer air from an ill-placed sink was carefully conducted into all the rooms by sedulously opening all the doors, and closing all the passage windows. It was that the slops were emptied into the foot-pans! — it was that the utensils were never properly rinsed; — it was that the chamber crockery was rinsed with dirty water; — it was that the beds were never properly shaken, aired, picked to pieces, or changed. It was that the carpets and curtains were always musty; — it was that the furniture was always dusty; — it was that the papered walls were saturated with dirt; — it was that the floors were never cleaned; — it was that the uninhabited rooms were never sunned, or cleaned, or aired; — it was that the cupboards were always reservoirs of foul air; — it was that the windows were always tight shut up at night; — it was that no window was ever systematically opened even in the day, or that the right window was not opened. A person gasping for air might open a window for himself. But the servants were not taught to open the windows, to shut the doors; or they opened the windows upon a dank well between high walls, not upon the airier court; or they opened the room doors into the unaired halls and passages, by way of airing the rooms. Now all this is not fancy, but fact. In that handsome house I have known in one summer three cases of hospital pyæmia, one of phlebitis, two of consumptive cough; all the immediate products of foul air. When, in temperate climates, a house is more unhealthy in summer than in winter, it is a certain sign of something wrong; Yet nobody learns the lesson. Yes, God always justifies His ways. He is teaching while you are not learning. This poor body loses his finger, that one loses his life. And all from the most easily preventable causes.