TO AVOID CONTAGION IN THE SICKROOM
If it is necessary to enter a sick room, particularly where there is fever, these simple rules should be observed to avoid contagion. Never enter fasting. At least take a few crackers or some such simple food before going in. Do not stand between the patient and the door where the current of air would naturally strike you. Avoid sitting on or touching the bed clothes as much as possible, and do not inhale the patient’s breath. The hands should always be washed in clean water before leaving the room, in order not to carry infection by them to other people or things you may need to touch. After visiting a fever patient change the clothes if possible. As soon as a fever is over and the patient is convalescent, the dress which has been used by the nurse should be fumigated in the same manner as the bedding, as already explained.
LIME AND CHARCOAL AS DISINFECTANTS
Housekeepers are gradually being educated up to a more practical knowledge of the laws of sanitation, and are coming to understand that cleanliness consists in something more than scrubbing the floors and washing the windows. Hence the following hint: A barrel each of lime and charcoal in the cellar will tend to keep that part of the house dry and sweet. A bowl of lime in a damp closet will dry and sweeten it. A dish of charcoal in a closet or refrigerator will do much toward making these places sweet. The power of charcoal to absorb odors is much greater directly after it has been burned than when it has been exposed to the air for a length of time. Charcoal may be purified and used again by heating it to a red heat. The lime must be kept in a place where there is no danger of its getting wet, and not exposed to the air.
CHLORIDE OF LIME AS A DISINFECTANT
Chloride of lime is a great purifier and disinfectant. One pound of it mixed with three gallons of water makes a solution which may be used for many purposes. To purify rooms, sprinkle it on the floor and even on the bed linen. Infected clothes should be dipped in it and wrung out just before they are washed. The lime without water may be sprinkled about slaughter houses, sinks, water closets and wherever there are offensive odors, and in a few days the smell will pass away. The odor of decaying vegetables or of dead animals is soon dispersed by the lime.
HOW TO PURIFY FOUL WATER
Two ounces of permanganate of potash thrown into a cistern will purify foul water sufficiently to make it drinkable. This is the disinfectant known as “Condy’s solution.” It is used in destroying the odors in the hold of vessels, and for many other disinfectant uses.
A WORD CONCERNING GOOD DIGESTION
In a recent novel one of the characters—a woman, of course—is made to speak the following interesting sentiments about husbands: “The very best of them don’t properly know the difference between their souls and their stomachs, and they fancy they are wrestling with their doubts, when really it is their dinners that are wrestling with them. Now, take Mr. Bateson hisself; a kinder husband or better Methodist never drew breath, yet so sure as he touches a bit of pork he begins to worry hisself about the doctrine of election till there’s no living with him. And then he’ll sit in the front parlor and engage in prayer for hours at a time till I say to him, ‘Bateson,’ says I, ‘I’d be ashamed to go troubling the Lord with such a prayer when a pinch of carbonate o’ soda would set things straight again.’”