Personal Hygiene: An Era Gone By

Nursing focus and objectives were the same in the early 1900s as they are now, however elementary in comparison they may seem. Safe patient care and treatment are of utmost importance and has been since nursing began. Nurses who read the questions I will share from the book, Lippincott's Nursing Manuals, State Board Questions and Answers For Nurses written in 1927,may raise an eyebrow, but these issues and questions were taken just as serious as the ones we study today.

The chapter titled, "Hygiene and Bacteriology", is about the preservation of the health of the individual (nurse) by "personal prophylaxis". In this book, personal hygiene is categorized as a branch of medicine. Most of the questions are about how a nurse should conduct herself/himself.

Question: "What general and special hygienic precautions should be observed by nurses during their training and while practicing their profession in order to preserve their own health?"

Answer: "Maintain normal resistance of the body by being clean, get a reasonable amount of sunlight, fresh air, sleep, exercise, pure water, and digestible food. Avoid infection by wearing sterile clothes, maintaining a rigid technique to avoid infecting surroundings after handling infectious equipment. Sterilize the hands and immunize such as taking the smallpox typhoid vaccines and diphtheria antitoxin".

While making the reader giggle, there is good advice in the answer. The fact that it is actually an exam question may seem foreign to us, because it seems obvious to us. Good hand washing is drilled into us as a society from childhood, not just as nurses.

Question: "What are nature's best common destroyers of disease germs?

Answer: "Fresh air and sunshine are nature's best common destroyer of disease germs".

Fresh air and sunshine are wonderful, but sometimes we need a bit more help to destroy those germs.

Question: Name several factors which may predispose a person to disease".

Answer: Gluttony, excess alcohol or other stimulants, fatigue from muscular exertion, loss of sleep and exposure".

This issue takes us back to basics. Actually, these reasons for disease are often not talked about in the doctor office, instead, a pill is given, or a surgery is performed. Human behavior hasn't changed, addictions remain the same. Although we now know there are many more factors involved in a person being predisposed to a disease such as genetics, as is the human condition to be self-destructive.

Question: "What keeps our body warm?

Answer: "We are kept warm by reason of the heat generated in the chemical changes that take place in our body tissues".

They knew there was a chemical process, but hadn't yet discovered much about metabolism and the use of ATP by our muscles to generate heat.

Question: "What is the legal status in some states of the public drinking cup?"

Answer: "The public drinking cup is very properly forbidden by law in many states".

WOW!!, hard to imagine that at one time everyone in town shared a water cup. Cholera and diphtheria were spread this way. In the early 1900s, Jersey City, New Jersey began to sterilize water which led to the decrease of disease across the United States.

Question: " What substances antagonistic toward bacteria does the body contain?"

Answer: "The body contains alexins, or opsonins, and antitoxins".

What we know about our immune system is vastly more than the above-mentioned molecules.

Conclusion We hear that the "good old times" was simpler. Compared to our overstimulated, wired world, it was. The tradeoff is that we have a greater knowledge of the how the body works as well as state of the art treatment. Imagine in another 100 years what the medical field will look like. Someone will be looking at our NCLEX questions and giggling or scratching their heads. We can only imagine what diseases won't exist anymore, what we will be using for treatments, or how those treatments will be accomplished.

I hope you have enjoyed reading these questions as much as I have. Look for more articles that will take you back in time!