This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Samuel Vaisrub, MD

JAMA. 1979;242(4):356.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Like medicine—in fact, more manifestly so—architecture is both an art and a science. Its art, often described synesthetically as frozen music, is apparent to everyone who stops to look. Its science is obvious to anyone who pauses to think. Like medicine, architecture also carries, albeit less conspicuously, a humanistic component. It responds to the emotional needs and the longings of the human spirit. In this, it indirectly shares with medicine a concern with human health needs.

One such concern is windows, or rather windowlessness, in public buildings. The problem is not a lack of ventilation or illumination—these are taken care of by air conditioning and artificial lighting—but the absence of an outlet for human visual curiosity. Wilson¹ described the effect of this sensory deprivation on health in 1972. He compared the incidence of postoperative delirium in two neighboring intensive care units that resembled each other in all respects save . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
American Medical Association Chicago

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?