Although it is quite possible that few may be able to follow every
instruction or precaution advised to guard against the spread of
diseases, we may at least outline the conditions to be aimed at and
secured as nearly as possible. In spite of the additional labor that it
makes, the ideal place for a sick room in a private house is as far from
the ground as possible. To be of any service at all isolation must be
real and complete. A room should be selected in the topmost story, the
door kept closed, a fire, large or small, according to the weather, kept
burning, and the windows open as much as possible. Even in the winter
this can be done without danger under most circumstances by lowering the
upper sash and breaking the draught by a blind or a screen. The
staircase and hall windows should be kept open day and night. The other
inmates of the house should keep their own rooms thoroughly ventilated.
The persons nursing the patient should on no account mix with other
members of the family, or if that cannot be helped they should take off
their dresses in the sick room, and after washing their hands and faces,
put on other dresses kept hanging outside the room, or in an adjoining
apartment.
All dishes used in the room should be washed separately, and not with
others in the kitchen. The room itself, except in case of measles and
whooping-cough, the poison of which does not retain its vitality for any
length of time, should be as scantily furnished as possible, containing
nothing which can retain infection. All woolen carpets, curtains and bed
hangings should be removed, and only wooden or cane-bottomed chairs
kept. There should be no sofa, and iron bedsteads are better than wood.
A straw mattress of little value, which may be destroyed afterwards, is
better than a hair one, which can be disinfected, but feather beds and
such coverings should be absolutely forbidden.
In scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox and typhoid, all soiled clothing
and bedding should be immediately put into an earthenware vessel,
containing a solution of corrosive sublimate (one drachm to a gallon of
water) and left to soak for some hours before being washed. On being
taken from this disinfecting solution they must, even at risk of
spoiling flannels, be thrown into boiling water and boiled for some
minutes before soaping and washing. No infected clothes should, under
any circumstances, be sent out of the house, unless all of these
precautions are absolutely guarded.
In cases of typhoid and scarlet fever the vessel which receives the
passages from the bowels should have in it a solution of corrosive
sublimate or of carbolic acid. The contents then should be stirred with
a poker before being poured into the water closet, and the same
disinfectant should be sprinkled liberally into the closet.
After the peeling in scarlet fever or the shedding of scabs in smallpox
has set in, the patient should take, at intervals of three or four days,
hot baths with soft soap, the hair, previously cut short, being well
scrubbed with the same. In scarlet fever and diphtheria the mouth and
throat should be frequently sprayed, washed out or gargled with a pretty
strong solution of permanganate of potash or a weak one of chlorinated
soda.