By Kate W. Baldwin, M.D., F.A.C.S. (1855-1935)
Former Senior Surgeon, Woman's Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.

The value of therapeutic light. In the effort to obtain relief from suffering, many of the more simple but potent measures have been overlooked while we have grasped at the obscure and complicated.

Sunlight is the basic source of all life and energy upon earth. Deprive plant or animal life of light, and it soon shows the lack and ceases to develop. Place a seed in the very best of soil or a human being in a palace, shut out the light, and what happens? Without food (in the usual sense of the term) man can live many days; without liquids a much shorter time; but not at all without the atmosphere which surrounds him at all times and to which he pays so little attention.

The forces on which life mostly depends are placed nearly or quite beyond personal control. For centuries scientists have devoted untiring effort to discover means for the relief or cure of human ills and restoration of the normal functions. Yet in neglected light and colour there is a potency far beyond that of drugs and serums.

In order that the whole body may function perfectly, each organ must be a hundred percent perfect. When the spleen, the liver, or any other organ falls below normal, it simply means that the body laboratories have not provided the required materials with which to work, either because they are not functioning as a result of some disorder of the internal mechanism, or because they have not been provided with the necessary materials.

Before the body can appropriate the required elements, they must be separated from the waste matter. Each element gives off a characteristic colour wave. The prevailing colour wave of hydrogen is red, and that of oxygen is blue, and each element in turn gives off its own special colour wave.

Sunlight, as it is received by the body, is split into the prismatic colours and their combinations as white light is split by passage through a prism. Everything on the red side of the spectrum is more or less stimulating, while the blue is sedative. There are many shades of each colour, and each is produced by a little different wave length. Just as sound waves are tuned to each other and produce harmony or discords, so color waves may be tuned, and only so can they be depended on always to produce the same results.

If one requires a dose of castor oil, he does not go to a drug-store and request a little portion from each bottle on the shelves. I see no virtue, then, in the use of the whole white light as a therapeutic measure when the different colors can give what is required without taxing the body to rid itself of that for which it has no use, and which may do more or less harm. If the body is sick it should be restored with the least possible effort.

There is no more accurate or easier way than by giving the colour representing the lacking elements, and the body will, through its radioactive forces [the aura], appropriate them and so restore the normal balance. Colour is the simplest and most accurate therapeutic measure yet developed.

For about six years I have given close attention to the action of colors in restoring the body functions, and I am perfectly honest in saying that, after nearly thirty-seven years of active hospital and private practice in medicine and surgery, I can produce quicker and more accurate results with colours than with any or all other methods combined - and with less strain on the patient. In many cases, the functions have been restored after the classical remedies have failed.

Of course, surgery is necessary in some cases, but the results will be quicker and better if colour is used before and after operation. Sprains, bruises and traumata of all sorts respond to colour as to no other treatment. Septic conditions yield, regardless of the specific organism. Cardiac lesions, asthma, hay fever, pneumonia, inflammatory conditions of the eyes, corneal ulcers, glaucoma, and cataracts are relieved by the treatment.

The treatment of carbuncles with colour is easy compared to the classical methods. One woman with a carbuncle involving the back of the neck from mastoid to mastoid, and from occipital ridge to the first dorsal vertebra, came under colour therapy after ten days of the very best of attention. From the first day of colour application, no opiates, not even sedatives, were required. This patient was saved much suffering, and she has little scar.

The use of colour in the treatment of burns is well worth investigating by every member of the profession. In such cases the burning sensation caused by the destructive forces may be counteracted in from twenty to thirty minutes, and it does not return.

True burns are caused by the destructive action of the red side of the spectrum, hydrogen predominating. Apply oxygen by the use of the blue side of the spectrum, and much will be done to relieve the nervous strain, the healing processes are rapid, and the resulting tissues soft and flexible.

In very extensive burns in a child of eight years of age there was almost complete suppression of urine for more than 48 hours, with a temperature of 105 to 106 degrees. Fluids were forced to no effect, and a more hopeless case is seldom seen. Scarlet was applied just over the kidneys at a distance of eighteen inches for twenty minutes, all other areas being covered. Two hours after, the child voided eight ounces of urine.

In some unusual and extreme cases that had not responded to other treatment, normal functioning has been restored by colour therapy. At present, therefore, I do not feel justified in refusing any case without a trial. Even in cases where death is inevitable, much comfort may be secured.

There is no question that light and colour are important therapeutic media, and that their adoption will be of advantage to both the profession and the people.

Abstract of paper presented at the clinical meeting of the Section on Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases of the Medical Society of the State of PA, held at the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, Philadelphia. October 12, 1926. Reprinted from the Atlantic Medical Journal of April 1927.

You can find out more information on colour at www.dinshahhealth.org and Let There Be Light by Darius Dinshah. 7th Edition ISBN 0-933917-24-4