The windows at the front of the house, as we have seen, were ordinarily few and small. From the Tufa Period, however, large windows were often made in the rooms around the peristyle; in the house of the Faun they range in width from 10 to 23 feet, and are so low that one sitting inside could look out through them. Upper rooms, also, were provided with windows of good size, sometimes measuring 2½ by 4 feet; but the remains are scanty. In later times occasionally a lower window opening on the street was made almost as large, and was protected by an iron grating. Windows were ordinarily closed by means of wooden shutters. Small panes of glass were found in the openings of the Baths near the Forum; had the Central Baths been finished, glass would undoubtedly have been used for the windows of the caldarium. The window of the tepidarium in the villa of Diomedes was closed by four glass panes set in a wooden frame (p. 357); in the other houses a narrow pane is occasionally found, but invariably set in masonry. CHAPTER XXXIV _THE HOUSE OF THE SURGEON_ The house of the Surgeon (casa del Chirurgo) is the oldest of the Pompeian houses that retained to the last, with but slight modifications, its original plan and appearance. It lies at the right of the Strada Consolare (VI. i. 10), about fifty paces inside the Herculaneum Gate. The name was suggested by the discovery of several surgical instruments in one of the rooms. [Illustration: Fig. 132.--Plan of the house of the Surgeon. 1. Fauces. 5. Atrium. 7. Tablinum. 8, 8. Alae. 9, 10. Dining rooms. 13. Kitchen, with hearth (_a_). 14. Posticum. 16. Colonnade. 18. Stairway to rooms over the rear of the house. 19. Room with window opening on the garden. 20. Garden.] This house was undoubtedly built before 200 B.C. The façade (Fig. 10) and the walls of the atrium are of large hewn blocks of Sarno limestone; other inner walls are of limestone framework (p. 37). The plan conforms to the simple Italic type, before the addition of the peristyle; yet it does not illustrate the oldest form of the native house, for the tablinum (Fig. 132, 7) has already displaced the recess for the bed opposite the front door. The measurements of the rooms are according to the Oscan standard (p. 44), the atrium being about 30 by 35 Oscan feet. We pass directly from the street through the fauces (1) into the Tuscan atrium (5) at the sides of which are sleeping rooms (6) and the two alae (8). Back of the tablinum is a colonnade (16) opening on the garden (20), which originally had a greater length; the room at the right (19) is a later addition, as also the smaller room at the other end (21). The roof of the colonnade was carried by square limestone pillars, one of which has been preserved in its original form.