Part Science, Part Magic: An Illuminating History of Healing With Light

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Part Science, Part Magic: An Illuminating History of Healing With Light

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/The Conversation

For millennia, humans had one obvious and reliable source of light – the Sun – and we knew the Sun was essential for our survival.

This might be why ancient religions – such as those in 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, and 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 and 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 – involved Sun worship.

Sun worship – such as to the Greek **** Helios – was common to many cultures. (Neoclassicism Enthusiast/

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

Early religions were also often 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. ***** people would turn to the shaman, priest or priestess for help.

While ancient peoples used the Sun to heal, this might not be how you think.

Since then, we’ve used light to heal in a number of ways. Some you might recognize today, others sound more like magic.

 

From Warming Ointments to Sunbaking

There’s not much evidence around today that ancient peoples believed sunlight  itself could cure illness. Instead, there’s more evidence they used the  warmth of the Sun to heal.

The Ebers Papyrus, from ancient Egypt, had recipes for ointments that needed to be warmed by the Sun. (

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

The Ebers Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical scroll from around 1500 BC. It contains a recipe for an ointment to “

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

”. The ointment was made of wine, onion, soot, fruit and the tree extracts frankincense and myrrh. Once it was applied, the person was “put in sunlight”.

Other recipes, to treat coughs for example, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 putting ingredients in a vessel and letting it stand in sunlight. This is presumably to warm it up and help it infuse more strongly. 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 is in the medical writings attributed to 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 who lived around 450-380 BC.

The physician Aretaeus, who was active around 150 AD in what is now modern Turkey, wrote that 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 chronic cases of what he called “lethargy” but we’d recognize today as depression:

Lethargics are to be ***** in the light, and exposed to the rays of the Sun (for the ******** is gloom); and in a rather warm place, for the cause is a congelation of the innate heat.

Classical Islamic scholar Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD) described the health effects of sunbathing (at a time when we didn’t know about the link to skin *******). In Book I of 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 he said the hot Sun helped everything from *********** and asthma to hysteria. He also said the Sun “invigorates the brain” and is beneficial for “clearing the *******”.

It was Sometimes Hard to Tell Science from Magic

All the ways of curing described so far depend more on the Sun’s heat rather than its light. But what about curing with light itself?

******* mystic and visionary Jakob Lorber believed sunlight cured pretty much anything. (

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) knew you could “split” sunlight into a 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

This and many other discoveries radically changed ideas about healing in the next 200 years.

But as new ideas flourished, it was sometimes hard to tell 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

For example, ******* mystic and visionary Jakob Lorber (1800-1864) believed sunlight was the best cure for pretty much anything. His 1851 book The Healing Power of Sunlight was 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Public health reformer Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 in the power of sunlight. In her famous book 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, she said of her patients:

second only to their need of fresh air is their need for light […] not only light but direct sunlight.

Nightingale also believed sunlight was the natural ****** of bacteria and viruses. She seems 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Sunlight can ***** some, but not all, bacteria and viruses.

Chromotherapy – a way of healing based on colors – emerged in this *******. While some of its supporters claim using ******** light for healing dates back to 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, it’s hard to find evidence of this now.

The 1878 book The Principles of Light and ****** paved the way for people to heal with different ******** light. (Getty Research Institute/Internet Archive Book Images/

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

Modern chromotherapy owes a lot to the fertile mind of physician Edwin Babbitt (1828-1905) from the ******* States. Babbitt’s 1878 book 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 was based on experiments with ******** light and his own visions and clairvoyant insights. 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Babbitt invented a portable stained-glass window called the 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, designed to restore the balance of the body’s natural ******** energy. Sitting for set periods under the ******** lights from the window was said to restore your health.

The Spectro-Chrome made one entrepreneur a lot of money. (Daderot/

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

Indian entrepreneur Dinshah Ghadiali (1873-1966) read about this, moved to the US and invented his own instrument, the 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, in 1920.

The theory behind the Spectro-Chrome was that the human body was made up of four elements – oxygen (blue), hydrogen (red), nitrogen (green) and carbon (yellow). When these colors were 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, it caused sickness.

Some hour-long sessions with the Spectro-Chrome would 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. By using its green light, for example, you could reportedly aid your pituitary ******, while yellow light helped your digestion.

By 1946 Ghadiali had made 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 from sales of this device in the US.

And Today?

While some of these treatments sound bizarre, we now know certain ******** lights treat some illnesses and disorders.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 is used to treat newborn ******* with jaundice in hospital. People with seasonal affective disorder (sometimes known as winter depression) can be treated with regular exposure to 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. And ultraviolet light is used to treat skin conditions, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Today, light therapy has even found its way into the 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. LED face masks, with celebrity endorsements, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 to ****** acne and reduce signs of ageing.

But like all forms of light, exposure to it has both risks and benefits. In the case of these LED face masks, they could disrupt your sleep.

Top image: Person bathing themselves in sunlight, AI representation of sun healing.  Source:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Stock

The article

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

was originally published on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Part #Science #Part #Magic #Illuminating #History #Healing #Light

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up