[Sidenote: This is no fancy.]

People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The
effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we
are affected by form, by colour, and light, we do know this, that they
have an actual physical effect.

Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to
patients are actual means of recovery.

But it must be _slow_ variety, e.g., if you shew a patient ten or twelve
engravings successively, ten-to-one that he does not become cold and
faint, or feverish, or even sick; but hang one up opposite him, one on
each successive day, or week, or month, and he will revel in the
variety.


[Sidenote: Flowers.]

The folly and ignorance which reign too often supreme over the
sick-room, cannot be better exemplified than by this. While the nurse
will leave the patient stewing in a corrupting atmosphere, the best
ingredient of which is carbonic acid; she will deny him, on the plea of
unhealthiness, a glass of cut-flowers, or a growing plant. Now, no one
ever saw "overcrowding" by plants in a room or ward. And the carbonic
acid they give off at nights would not poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded
rooms, they actually absorb carbonic acid and give off oxygen.
Cut-flowers also decompose water and produce oxygen gas. It is true there