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100
THE BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR.
[chap.

two screens will be useful here) the light would not fall disagreeably on the patient's eyes. No rule can be given about light. In some cases the sick person loves to look out of the window all day, whilst in others a ray of light on the face is agony. In such circumstances the bed should, if possible, be so arranged as to allow the light to come from behind, for it is only in rare and exceptional cases that sunshine as well as outer air may not be admitted daily into a sick-room. We are fast getting beyond the ignorance of a north aspect for a bedroom, and most of us know that sunshine is quite as necessary to a bedroom as to a garden. No children will ever thrive unless they have plenty of sunshine, as well as air in the rooms in which they sleep, and a sick-room should also have both in abundance. If the weather be hot, it is easy, in England, to modify the temperature by means of outer blinds, persiennes, open doors, and other means. Few people understand what I have learnt in tropical countries, and that is, how to exclude the outer air during the hot hours of the day. The windows of the nursery or sick-room (for we all need to be treated like children when we are ill) should be opened wide during the early cool, morning-tide, and the room flooded with sun and outer air. Then, by nine or ten o'clock, shut up rigorously