Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/95

Rh boldly set open, and be kept open at the top all night. If they are to be closed of necessity, a free chimney-draught must be procured, and an Arnott's valve is always an advantage. The bed should be free of curtains, but a single screen may be placed so as to ward off any direct draught from the door or window. Warmth of body is best secured by woolen bedclothes; but, if the temperature of the air is below 60° Fahr., it will, with advantage, be raised to that pitch by a fire in the open grate. Gas should on no pretense be burned through the night in this bedroom, and as few other lights as possible, for the patient requires all the air that is to be had, and must not be carelessly robbed of it. Above all things, the consumptive person should be the sole occupant of his own bed and bedroom. To place such a one for several hours close to another person, however healthy, is injurious to both, but especially to the sick. No ties of relationship, and no mistaken kindness, should cause this rule of isolation ever to be broken.

It has been stated already that the room of the sufferer should be large. It should include, whenever practicable, at least fifteen hundred cubic feet of breathing-space, under all plans of ventilation. If more space can be had, all the better. If less only is obtainable, then the ventilation must be the more carefully attended to.

When the patient has left his room in the morning—and he should do so early—the windows and doors should be set open, and a current of air be allowed to flow through it during the whole of the day. If the air of the apartment be at a temperature below 60° Fahr., or loaded with moisture, the fire should be lighted two hours before bedtime.

Consumptive patients frequently ask, especially in winter-time, the value of what are called respirators; and I have known some poor people purchase things of this description at what was to them considerable cost. The use of mufflers, which are, in fact, respirators, has been known for ages; and Dr.Hales, more than a century ago, recommended a scientifically made muffler for persons obliged to enter into places where noxious gases were given off. Dr.Beddoes, too, as Dr.Arnott shows, pointed out, in the year 1802, that a few folds of gauze held over the mouth and nose made the air warm and moist for respiration, and that such mufflers were, therefore, useful to consumptive and asthmatic persons. The object of the muffler or respirator is this: it retains the heat thrown out in the expired air, and gives up this heat to the cold air that enters in inspiration. In cold, dry weather, the muffler is very useful, and should be worn by all phthisical patients when out-of-doors; but when the air is moist and cold it sometimes is complained of as embarrassing the respiration. It should then be thrown aside. Any patient may easily make one of these mufflers for himself, for the cost of a few pence, out of a piece of fine wire gauze, cut oval so as to cover the mouth and nose and fixed in the center of a small Shetland shawl, so that it may be tied on like an ordinary comforter, with the gauze in the center for breathing through. The metal