On the other hand, it would not be desirable even if it were possible for all sick persons to be cared for in institutions. Care at home when it is adequate may be more successful than equally skillful care given elsewhere, since the sick quite as much as the well are injured by long separation from normal family life. Most children, because they need the attention of their own mothers, most convalescent and chronic patients, and most aged persons are cared for at home; and in the great majority of cases no better place for them could be found. Since patients of these four groups have needs peculiar to themselves, some
special points in caring for them are considered in this chapter.
CHILDREN
Ability to observe quickly and accurately is seldom more needed than it is by a woman who cares for children. No one expects babies to explain their troubles, but people forget that small children are unable to describe their physical sensations with any degree of accuracy, although discomfort or sickness may show itself in all degrees of ill temper and bad conduct. For these exhibitions many a suffering child has been punished, where an older and more articulate person would have received considerate attention.
Children, like babies, have a low resistance to disease. Moreover, they react quickly both to favorable and to unfavorable surroundings. Hence slight causes sometimes produce pronounced or even violent symptoms in children without giving cause for great anxiety, although the same symptoms if exhibited by adults, might indicate critical illness. On the other hand the recuperative power of children is high, and their recoveries are sometimes surprisingly rapid. It is a mistake, when a child has completely recovered from an acute but brief illness, to coddle him for weeks afterward merely because a grown person in similar
circumstances would have failed to regain his strength.
When a child is sick in bed, especial efforts should be made to insure adequate ventilation without chilling him. Children always lose heat rapidly because the body surface is proportionately large; when they are ill, therefore, it is especially necessary to keep them well covered, to see that their hands and feet are warm, and to avoid chilling them during their baths. But overheating must also be avoided, since all children, sick or well, who are too warmly dressed or who stay in rooms that are too warm, become weak and irritable and more susceptible than others to colds and other respiratory disorders. The child's skin should be kept clean and dry, but he should not be disturbed nor handled unnecessarily.
Sick children require very simple food at short intervals. Variety is not so necessary for a child as for an adult, unless the child has been allowed to form bad habits of eating. Sick children should not be indulged unnecessarily, either in regard to their food or in other ways. However, attempts made during an illness to change the habits of a badly trained child are unwise because usually unsuccessful; parents who sow the wind by neglecting to train their children when they are in good health may as well make up their minds to
reap a veritable whirlwind when the children are ill. Even when children are well trained it is difficult and sometimes impossible to prevent them from forming bad habits during sickness. Yet the labor of training a child reaps perhaps at no other time a richer reward than it does when the child is ill, and his recovery might be seriously impeded by unwillingness to accept necessary food, medicine, or treatment.