_First_, Plenty of God's pure, free air; and _second_, sunshine. These are
indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this
matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was
a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one
hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a
dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
"Madam," I said, "I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no
sunshine permeates by day;" for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking
fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp
cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been
prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked
astonished at my Oedipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing
marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a
clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
"Yes, sir," she finally answered, "he always sleeps in a room where the
sunlight don't enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so
pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said
nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am
discouraged."