dmit that light has quite as real and
tangible effects upon the human body. But this is not all. Who has not
observed the purifying effect of light, and especially of direct
sunlight, upon the air of a room? Here is an observation within
everybody's experience. Go into a room where the shutters are always
shut, (in a sick room or a bedroom there should never be shutters shut),
and though the room be uninhabited, though the air has never been
polluted by the breathing of human beings, you will observe a close,
musty smell of corrupt air, of air i.e. unpurified by the effect of
the sun's rays. The mustiness of dark rooms and corners, indeed, is
proverbial. The cheerfulness of a room, the usefulness of light in
treating disease is all-important.

[Sidenote: Aspect, view, and sunlight matters of first importance to the
sick.]

A very high authority in hospital construction has said that people do
not enough consider the difference between wards and dormitories in
planning their buildings. But I go farther, and say, that healthy people
never remember the difference between _bed_-rooms and _sick_-rooms, in
making arrangements for the sick. To a sleeper in health it does not
signify what the view is from his bed. He ought never to be in it
excepting when asleep, and at night. Aspect does not very much signify
either (provided the sun reach his bed-room some time in every day, to
purify the air), because he ought never to be in his bed-room except
during the hours when there is no sun. But the case is exactly reversed
with the sick, even should they be as many hours out of their beds as
you are in yours, which probably they are not. Therefore, that they
should be able, without raising themselves or turning in bed, to see out
of window from their beds, to see sky and sun-light at least, if you can
show them nothing else, I assert to be, if not of the very first
importance for recovery, at least something very near it. And you should
therefore look to the position of the beds of your sick one of the very
first things. If they can see out of two windows instead of one, so much
the better. Again, the morning sun and the mid-day sun--the hours when
they are quite certain not to be up, are of more importance to them, if
a choice must be made, than the afternoon sun. Perhaps you can take them
out of bed in the afternoon and set them by the window, where they can
see the sun. But the best rule is, if possible, to give them direct
sun