Health at Home, Part I [pp. 311-321]

314 APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
subject of light to the subject of sleep. But
perhaps some one will say, Why, in speaking of
a home and fireside topics, should you begin with
bedrooms? There is the drawing-room, surely,
first to be thought of; that room in which the
company gathers when company comes together;
that room in which the lady of the house takes
the most pride, shows the most taste, feels most
at home. There is also the dining-room, or sit ting-room, or breakfast-room, or study. Again,
there is the kitchen-of all rooms, surely, the
most important in every sanitary point of
view?
We will enter all these rooms in good time;
but let us go into the bedroom first, and get that
in order, because, after all, it is really the most
important room in the house by far and far again.
I know it is not commonly thought to be so. I
am quite aware from my daily observations, for
over thirty years, that this is one of the least
popular notions about bedrooms. I often think,
as I wend my way up ever so many different
kinds of stairs daily, that a doctor's usual jour ney would be something like that on a tread wheel were it not for the fact that there is always
some new ending to his ascents, and that on his
mission of freedom and usefulness he is carrying
the blessings of the services his brethren are
giving to him, for dispensation, into the sanctua ries of sorrow. But one fact would lighten my
heart very much more-I mean the fact, if it
were as fully as it were easily realizable, that I
should always find the bedrooms in sickness or
in health befitting their office and the purpose to
which they are assigned.
As a rule I regret to record that from want
of appreciation of what is most healthy, in opposition to a keen appreciation of what is most fashionable, the bedroom is too often the part of the
house that is least considered. It may be in any
part of the house. There is no room too much
out of the way or too little cared for that may
not be a bedroom. "This is only a bedroom," is
the commonest observation of the woman who is
deputed to show you over an empty house that
stands to be let. "We can turn the dressingroom into a bedroom whenever we like," is not
unfrequently a housewife's, and even a good
housewife's, expression. "Give me a shake-down
somewhere," is the request of the unexpected
traveler or visitor who wants to stay with you all
night. "Anywhere will do, so long as it is a
bed." "This is only an attic; but it is large
enough for one servant, you know, and two have
slept in it many a time before now." These are
the kind of ordinary terms that are applied to
bedrooms as apologies for something that is confessedly but observedly wrong about them. The
language itself implies error; but it is far from
expressing the whole of the error that really ex ists.
When we enter the bedroom we too often find
it, though it may be a good-sized room, altogeth er unsuited as a sleeping-apartment. It may be
situated either at the back or the front of the
house; it may or may not have a fireplace, and,
if it should have a fireplace, the register may or
may not be open. The windows may be large or
small, according to mere caprice of the builder,
or of accident, or of necessity; and, whether the
window will open or shut from the top or the
bottom sash, or from both, is a matter of small est consequence. As a rule the bedroom-win dows that have a double sash open only from the
bottom, and it is the most usual occurrence to
find the sash-lines out of gear altogether, or the
frames in a bad state, so that the sash has to be
supported with care, or " humored," whenever it
has to be opened or closed. Then to the win dow, that the room may look snug and comfort able, must be muslin blinds (half blinds), roller blinds, and very often heavy curtains. When
the window is opened the roller-blind blows out
like the sail of a boat, or blows in, at the risk of
knocking down the looking-glass. Sometimes
Venetian blinds, which are never in order for two
months together, take the place of roller-blinds,
and it becomes quite an art to manage the laths,
though these blinds are on the whole the best.
Then the walls of bedrooms are in most instances
covered with paper, and of all rooms in the house
they are least frequently papered. "The lower
rooms must be papered, they look so very dirty;
the bedrooms are dingy, but they may stand over
another year; nobody sees them." To carry out
further the idea of snugness, the bedrooms are
carpeted, it may be over their whole surface right
up to the walls of the rooms, and the carpet is
nailed down, so that it may be swept without being dragged out of its place.
Again, the bedroom is too often made a kind
of half lumber-room-a place in which things
that have to be concealed are carefully stowed
away. "Under the bed" is a convenient hidingplace. It is the fact that once in a public institution for the sick which I inspected there existed
an arrangement by which each new patient who
came in to be cured had his every-day clothes,
after they were taken off his body, put into a
rickety old box and pushed under his bed, to remain there until he was able to put them on again
when he "left the house" or until he died, if his
disease ended fatally, and his relatives claimed
them. I found eighteen of these boxes of clothes
secreted systematically under eighteen beds in
one insalubrious sick-room or ward of this
establishment. In private houses this same
plan of stowing away old clothes, old boots
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