It helps to have a hospital room with a view

Hospitals are, by their nature, scary and depressing places. But they don't have to be ugly as well — and there's ample evidence that aesthetics matter to patient health. When the University Medical Center of Princeton tested a mock-up room with nice views, a sofa for guests and no roommates, it found that patients asked for 30 percent less pain medication, reports the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. This result shouldn't be surprising. The seminal study on the subject was published in 1984 — that's right, 30 years ago — in Science. Roger S. Ulrich, compared two groups of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery in the same hospital, matching patients for characteristics such as age and obesity that might affect their recovery.