_All utensils should be kept clean and ready for instant use._ The bedpan should always be warmed before being used. Running warm water in and on it is usually the easiest way to do this. It should be thoroughly dried on the outside so that it will not wet the bed. It is a good plan to have a piece of rubber sheet or several thicknesses of old newspapers covered with a bath towel to put under the bedpan in bed. When carrying away, keep covered. Use cold water first, and after washing with soapy water, rinse and dry before putting away. Basins in constant use, especially if they are used to hold disinfectant, need to be well scoured with sapolio from time to time. Nothing is more shiftless looking than a dark rim of dirt or stain around a basin. Hot water bags should be emptied when not in use and hung upside down. The stoppers should be kept fastened to them. Ice caps should be dried inside and out and stuffed with cotton or tissue paper to keep the sides from sticking together. Hot and Cold Applications Hot applications are used to relieve pain, to supply heat, and to bring down temperature. Both moist and dry heat are used. Hot water bags, metal heaters, electric pads, hot flannels are the commonest forms of dry heat. Fomentations, poultices, and baths are the simplest forms of moist heat. In applying heat, one should be ever on the watch to avoid burning a patient. The skin of babies, children, old people, and of those who have been ill a long time, is very easily burned. Again, the same heat that is easily tolerated by one person, may burn another. _Hot water bags_ or their substitute, electric pads or metal heaters should always be wrapped in towels or have their own coverings. Never fill a hot water bag more than two-thirds full. The water should not be hot enough to scald a patient if the bag should spring a leak. Before putting in the cork, expel the air by twisting the upper part between the neck and the level of the water before putting in the cork. Be sure to cork tightly. If the bag is to be where the patient will bear the weight, put in a very little water and renew from time to time. Where there is no hot water bag, stone bottles may be used, or bags of salt or sand may be heated in the oven. The practice of using ordinary glass bottles is an unsafe one, as the corks are not always to be depended on to stay tight and the glass breaks easily. When bags of salt or sand are used the coverings should be thick enough to prevent the particles from sifting through. Pieces of flannel the right size may in some cases supply all the heat that is necessary. They should be covered with another flannel to keep in the warmth.