may be wiped with a damp cloth without injury to itself and so polished as that it may be damped without injury to others. To dust, as it is now practised, truly means to distribute dust more equally over a room.
As to floors, the only really clean floor I know is the Berlin lackered floor, which is wet rubbed and dry rubbed every morning to remove the dust. The French parquet is always more or less dusty, although infinitely superior in point of cleanliness and healthiness to our absorbent floor.
For a sick room, a carpet is perhaps the worst expedient which could by any possibility have been invented. If you must have a carpet, the only safety is to take it up two or three times a year, instead of once. A dirty carpet literally infects the room. And if you consider the enormous quantity of organic matter from the feet of people coming in, which must saturate it, this is by no means surprising.
As for walls, the worst is the papered wall; the next worst is plaster. But the plaster can be redeemed by frequent lime-washing; the paper requires frequent renewing. A glazed paper gets rid of a good deal of the danger. But the ordinary bed-room paper is all that it ought not to be.[1]
The close connection between ventilation and cleanliness is shown in this. An ordinary light paper will last clean much longer if there is an Arnott's ventilator in the chimney than it otherwise would.
The best wall now extant is oil paint. From this you can wash the animal exuviæ.[2]
These are what make a room musty.
The best wall for a sick-room or ward that could be made is pure white non-absorbent cement or glass, or glazed tiles, if they were made sightly enough.
Air can be soiled just like water. If you blow into water you will soil it with the animal matter from your breath.
- ↑ I am sure that a person who has accustomed her senses to compare atmospheres proper and improper, for the sick and for children, could tell, blindfold, the difference of the air in old painted and in old papered rooms, cœteris paribus. The latter "will always be musty, even with all the windows open.
- ↑ If you like to wipe your dirty door, or some portion of your dirty wall, by hanging up your clean gown or shawl against it on a peg, this is one way certainly, and the most usual way, and generally the only way of cleaning either door or wall in a bed-room!
