For millennia, people had one apparent and dependable supply of sunshine – the Solar – and we knew the Solar was important for our survival.
This may be why historical religions – equivalent to these in Egypt, Greece, the Center East, India, Asia, and Central and South America – concerned Solar worship.
Early religions had been additionally typically tied up with therapeutic. Sick folks would flip to the shaman, priest or priestess for assist.
Whereas historical peoples used the Solar to heal, this won’t be the way you suppose.
Since then, we have used gentle to heal in various methods. Some you would possibly recognise as we speak, others sound extra like magic.
From warming ointments to sunbaking
There’s not a lot proof round as we speak that historical peoples believed daylight itself may remedy sickness. As a substitute, there’s extra proof they used the heat of the Solar to heal.
The Ebers Papyrus is an historical Egyptian medical scroll from round 1500 BCE. It incorporates a recipe for an ointment to “make the sinews […] versatile“.
The ointment was product of wine, onion, soot, fruit and the tree extracts frankincense and myrrh. As soon as it was utilized, the particular person was “put in sunlight”.
Different recipes, to deal with coughs for instance, concerned placing components in a vessel and letting it stand in daylight. That is presumably to heat it up and assist it infuse extra strongly. The identical approach is within the medical writings attributed to Greek doctor Hippocrates who lived round 450-380 BCE.
The doctor Aretaeus, who was lively round 150 CE in what’s now trendy Turkey, wrote that daylight may remedy persistent instances of what he known as “lethargy” however we might recognise as we speak as despair:
Lethargics are to be laid within the gentle, and uncovered to the rays of the Solar (for the illness is gloom); and in a quite heat place, for the trigger is a congelation of the innate warmth.
Classical Islamic scholar Ibn Sina (980-1037 CE) described the well being results of sunbathing (at a time once we did not know concerning the hyperlink to pores and skin most cancers).
In Guide I of The Canon of Medication he stated the recent Solar helped every part from flatulence and bronchial asthma to hysteria. He additionally stated the Solar “invigorates the brain” and is useful for “clearing the uterus”.
It was typically laborious to inform science from magic
All of the methods of curing described thus far rely extra on the Solar’s warmth quite than its gentle. However what about curing with gentle itself?
English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) knew you can “split” daylight right into a rainbow spectrum of colors.
This and plenty of different discoveries radically modified concepts about therapeutic within the subsequent 200 years.
However as new concepts flourished, it was typically laborious to inform science from magic.
For instance, German mystic and visionary Jakob Lorber (1800-1864) believed daylight was one of the best remedy for just about something. His 1851 e book The Therapeutic Energy of Daylight was nonetheless in print in 1997.
Public well being reformer Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) additionally believed within the energy of daylight. In her well-known e book Notes on Nursing, she stated of her sufferers:
second solely to their want of contemporary air is their want for gentle […] not solely gentle however direct daylight.
Nightingale additionally believed daylight was the pure enemy of micro organism and viruses. She appears at the very least partially proper. Daylight can kill some, however not all, micro organism and viruses.
Chromotherapy – a method of therapeutic primarily based on colors and lightweight – emerged on this interval. Whereas a few of its supporters declare utilizing colored gentle for therapeutic dates again to historical Egypt, it is laborious to search out proof of this now.
Trendy chromotherapy owes quite a bit to the fertile thoughts of doctor Edwin Babbitt (1828-1905) from the US. Babbitt’s 1878 e book The Ideas of Gentle and Colour was primarily based on experiments with colored gentle and his personal visions and clairvoyant insights. It is nonetheless in print.
Babbitt invented a conveyable stained-glass window known as the Chromolume, designed to revive the stability of the physique’s pure colored power. Sitting for set intervals underneath the colored lights from the window was stated to revive your well being.
Indian entrepreneur Dinshah Ghadiali (1873-1966) examine this, moved to the US and invented his personal instrument, the Spectro-Chrome, in 1920.
The speculation behind the Spectro-Chrome was that the human physique was made up of 4 components – oxygen (blue), hydrogen (purple), nitrogen (inexperienced) and carbon (yellow). When these colors had been out of stability, it precipitated illness.
Some hour-long classes with the Spectro-Chrome would restore stability and well being. By utilizing its inexperienced gentle, for instance, you can reportedly help your pituitary gland, whereas yellow gentle helped your digestion.
By 1946 Ghadiali had made round 1,000,000 {dollars} from gross sales of this gadget within the US.
And as we speak?
Whereas a few of these remedies sound weird, we now know sure colored lights deal with some diseases and issues.
Phototherapy with blue gentle is used to deal with new child infants with jaundice in hospital. Individuals with seasonal affective dysfunction (typically often called winter despair) could be handled with common publicity to white or blue gentle. And ultraviolet gentle is used to deal with pores and skin circumstances, equivalent to psoriasis.
Right this moment, gentle remedy has even discovered its method into the magnificence trade. LED face masks, with superstar endorsements, promise to struggle zits and cut back indicators of ageing.
However like all types of gentle, publicity to it has each dangers and advantages. Within the case of those LED face masks, they might disrupt your sleep.
That is the ultimate article in our ‘Gentle and well being’ collection, the place we take a look at how gentle impacts our bodily and psychological well being in typically stunning methods. Learn different articles within the collection.
Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Ladies’s Well being, Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, The College of Western Australia
This text is republished from The Dialog underneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the authentic article.
