“Put the pale withering plant and human being into the sun,” wrote the famous English nurse Florence Nightingale, “and, if not too far gone, each will recover health and spirit.” In 1860, Nightingale reported that her patients naturally turned toward the light, even as they would complain about the pain of lying on an injured side. “Then why do you lie on that side?” she would ask the patient. “He does not know—but we do. It is because it is the side towards the window.”
