In this connection I will notice very briefly the influence of change of scene upon the invalid. When the same objects are seen by him from day to day, and he has the same subjects of thought and conversation, these all act as so many fastenings, or points of attachment, tending to hold the disease in the same unvarying condition. But take him away from them all, and set him free from this discouraging and burdensome sameness, and let his thoughts and feelings flow into other channels, and the change of course favors the introduction of a new state of things, bodily as well as mentally. The new objects that he sees not only take off his attention from his diseased sensations, but the new excitement that he feels, as he sees them one after another, diffuses a refreshing and invigorating influence throughout his system. And imagination lends her aid in producing this effect. It seems to him that everything is better than it was where he was so lately shut up with the feeling almost of a prisoner—that the air is more pure, the grass more green, the foliage of the trees more dense and rich, and even the sun more cheerfully bright. Something, it is true, is to be attributed to change of air under such circumstances, but much less commonly than to the influence of change of scene upon the mind. The sick room, as every physician has frequent occasion to witness, acquires after a time a monotony that is dreary and painful to the confined invalid. Day after day he sees the same furniture and same walls, every irregularity of whose surface he becomes acquainted with, and he is forced to seek for some variety even in the most trivial circumstances. “There, Doctor,” said an invalid playfully, “I have made a little change, to-day. I have had the rocking-chair put the other side of the fire-place, and the bureau moved to that corner, and those phials on the shelf, you see, have changed their places. My friends, Cologne and Camphor, have gone to the other side of that vase, and those drops (which, by the way, Doctor, I think that I have taken so long that some _change_ would be well) have their station now quite at the other end of the shelf. And my good grandmother, you see, looks down upon me from the other side of the room. Variety is pleasing, Doctor, even within a few yards square, when one can not get any farther.” Even when the invalid is not confined to the sick chamber, but has his rides and his walks, the monotony of every day’s routine becomes a weariness. And no wonder that an escape from this is so often so manifestly beneficial to him.