e. You can always moderate the light by blinds
and curtains.

Heavy, thick, dark window or bed curtains should, however, hardly ever
be used for any kind of sick in this country. A light white curtain at
the head of the bed is, in general, all that is necessary, and a green
blind to the window, to be drawn down only when necessary.

[Sidenote: Without sunlight, we degenerate body and mind.]

One of the greatest observers of human things (not physiological), says,
in another language, "Where there is sun there is thought." All
physiology goes to confirm this. Where is the shady side of deep
vallies, there is cretinism. Where are cellars and the unsunned sides of
narrow streets, there is the degeneracy and weakliness of the human
race--mind and body equally degenerating. Put the pale withering plant
and human being into the sun, and, if not too far gone, each will
recover health and spirit.

[Sidenote: Almost all patients lie with their faces to the light.]

It is a curious thing to observe how almost all patients lie with their
faces turned to the light, exactly as plants always make their way
towards the light; a patient will even complain that it gives him pain
"lying on that side." "Then why _do_ you lie on that side?" He does not
know,--but we do. It is because it is the side towards the window. A
fashionable physician has recently published in a government report that
he always turns his patient's faces from the light. Yes, but nature is
stronger than fashionable physicians, and depend upon it she turns the
faces back and _towards_ such light as she can get. Walk through the
wards of a hospital, remember the bed sides of private patients you have
seen, and count how many sick you ever saw lying with their faces
towards the wall.

X. CLEANLINESS OF ROOMS AND WALLS.

[Sidenote: Cleanliness of carpets and furniture.]

It cannot be necessary to tell a nurse that she should be clean, or that
she should keep her patient clean,--seeing that the greater part of
nursing consists in preserving cleanliness. No ventilation can freshen a
room or ward where the most scrupulous cleanliness is not observed.
Unless the wind be blowing through the windows at the rate of twenty
miles an hour, dusty carpets, dirty wainscots, musty curtains and
furniture, will infallibly produce a close smell. I have lived in a
large and expensively furnished London house, where the only constant
inmate in two very lofty rooms, with