COMMON COMMUNICABLE DISEASES. 
(particularly your nails, beneath which are fav¬ 
orite hiding places for germs), and disinfect them 
each time you attend to the evacuations. Never 
touch your face with your hands after such work 
until they have been carefully cleansed and dis¬ 
infected. A tiny speck of any one of the dis¬ 
charges may be deposited upon the face or lips 
and gain an entrance to the body with disastrous 
consequences to you. Be watchful of like dan¬ 
gers when giving baths, enemas and in cleansing 
the lips, the teeth and the mouth of your patient. 
Pay strict attention to personal disinfection be¬ 
fore going from a communicable disease to an¬ 
other case. 
Keep your patient’s person, bed, bedding and 
room absolutely neat and clean . Wipe all wood¬ 
work and furniture with a cloth wrung out of a 
disinfectant solution. Pay strict atten¬ 
tion to ventilation. Remember that neatness 
and cleanliness are necessities, and that an abun¬ 
dance of fresh air and sunshine are Nature’s 
own disinfectants. Two to three thousand cubic 
feet of fresh air are required in all sick rooms; 
the latter amount is obtainable in a room fifteen 
feet wide by twenty long, with a ceiling eleva¬ 
tion of ten feet, but the current must be changed 
every hour in order to keep the atmosphere pure. 
Your patient can be protected by a screen from 
her possible fear of ‘'catching cold” while you 
open up the windows from the bottom. They 
should be kept open a few inches at the top all the 
time. All “disease germs” multiply rapidly in a 
room kept dark, dingy and badly ventilated, and 
where papers, books, and rubbish are allowed to 
accumulate. The sick one takes these germs into 
47 
General 
Precautions. 
