Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1911 — WOMANS SPHERE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WOMANS SPHERE

ISOLATING THE SICK r\ HOW SPREADING OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASE IS PREVENTED. • ■ ... ] t - Upholstered Furniture, Draperies and Carpets Should Be Removed From Room and Everyone Excluded Except Doctor and Nurses. * In this day of sanitation it seems useless to say anything on the care of contagious diseases, but the family of a patient is often ignorant of the precautions that should be taken. Contagious and infectious diseases cannot be too quickly, isolated in order to prevent their further spread. As early as possible the patient should be put in a suitable room that may be well aired and kept separate from the other part of the house. Everything should be removed that is not absolutely necessary for patient and nurse, especially upholstered furniture or draperies. There should be no carpets. Matting that may be removed and burned will serve. Pictures and decorations should also be removed unless they are to be burned when the case is finished. Only plain wooden chairs and‘tables should be used. The bedstead, bed and bedding should be such that they may be soaked in disinfectants or burned. The doors to the room should be kept slosed as much as possible, and the loorway should be further guarded by l sheet, so hung that it covers the entire space before the door. This should be wet every few minutes —kept wet constantly with a disinfecting solution. If possible, the room adjoining the sick room should be given to the use of the nurse. There should be sheets it the doors, and it should be prepared !n the same manner as the sick room, eo that it may b& disinfected. Here the nurse should eat, sleep, change her clothing and disinfect herself before going into any other part of the house or out of doors. Only the doctor and the nurse should have access to the room. If any visitors or members of the family enter it even for a short time they should wash their bodies, also the hair, in a disinfecting solution and disinfect their clothing. Such solutions shpuld be abundantly supplied about tbe sick room. All articles like clothing and dishes taken from the room should first be disinfected. The clothing should afterward be washed separate from the other clothing of the .family. For handkerchiefs the patient may use pieces of old soft muslin, which may be burned. All articles should be brought to the door of the sick room, and those that have been disinfected taken away from the sick room by servants, so that she nurse does not go through the house. The sick room should be well warmed,

so that the windows may be freely’, opened to air. At the termination of an attack thei patient’s body and hair should bei washed in a disinfecting solution and fresh clotbing put on before mingling with others. Then the room should bei thoroughly disinfected, the paper removed from the walls, the floor and furnishings soaked in disinfecting solutions and scrubbed with soap and water. A good method is to burn sulphur or formaldehyde in the room first, followed by the disinfecting wtjslu