ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the notion of the therapeutic environment in the context of twentieth-century Finnish tuberculosis sanatoria, primarily from the point of view of the patient. Relying on a major collection of written illness narratives, the chapter asks how sanatorium patients related to the natural environment and argues that patients assigned it both aesthetic, pragmatic and therapeutic value. However, the patients mainly discussed the healing power of nature in terms of general wellbeing rather than specific curative effects. The aesthetic, pragmatic and therapeutic aspects were closely intertwined in the way they discussed their environmental experiences, and emotions played a central role in cementing these aspects together. The chapter explains patients’ attitude towards the natural environment with reference to contextual factors such as the epidemiology of tuberculosis and the social outlook of the patient population.
