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 opposite windows, was myself, and yet, owing to the above-mentioned dirty circumstances, no opening of windows could ever keep those rooms free from closeness; but the carpet and curtains having been turned out of the rooms altogether, they became instantly as fresh as could be wished.  It is pure nonsense to say that in London a room cannot be kept clean.  Many of our hospitals show the exact reverse.

[Sidenote:  Dust never removed now.]