Today, light and healing. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
The 1903 Nobel Prize in
medicine went to Danish doctor Niels Finsen,
pioneer of photo therapy. Finsen was only forty-two
and suffering from Picks disease, which attacks the
internal organs. Born in Denmark, Finsen finished
medical school in 1890 in Copenhagen and stayed on
to teach for three years. Then he devoted the rest
of his life to studying the healing effects of
light.
By then, physicists had found that light and heat
occupy portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. In
the wavelength range from a ten-thousandth of a
millimeter to one millimeter, radiation passes from
ultraviolet to visible to infrared (or heat.)
And, in the everyday world around Finsen, an
increasingly urbanized public had come to believe
in the health-giving properties of sunlight, fresh
air, and the outdoors. Finsen meant to rationalize
modern sun-worship by joining science with
anecdote.
He set out to find wavelengths that would best heal
the affected skin. He was especially interested in
smallpox -- and in tuberculosis, which can attack
skin as well as lungs and bones.
Finsen found that ultraviolet radiation (which he
called chemical rays) aggravated
smallpox lesions, so he filtered it out. The
leftover red light sped healing in recovering
smallpox victims. But Finsen did use ultraviolet
radiation to heal tuberculosis lesions, and he had
enough success in that area to win the Nobel Prize.
Finsen had been driven toward light therapy by his
own illness. Even before he finished medical
school, he'd treated his weakness and anemia by
sunbathing. By 1895, he was recommending sunbathing
for all forms of tuberculosis, not just
skin lesions.
Here he picked up a colorful disciple, a
charismatic Swiss doctor and promoter, Auguste
Rollier. Rollier opened a whole string of
high-altitude tuberculosis sanitariums. Old photos
show acres of near-naked bodies arrayed on cots,
soaking up ultraviolet rays in the cool bright
alpine air. These retreats stayed filled, even
during both world wars.
So, where is photo therapy today? Smallpox has (for
the moment) been eradicated. And we treat most
forms of tuberculosis not with light, but with
antibiotics. Few people remember Finsen, and, in
fact, he died the year after he won the Nobel
Prize.
But he did ease smallpox suffering. The
tuberculosis story is not so clear. We now break
ultraviolet radiation down into three wavelength
ranges. One of them clearly aggravates
tuberculosis lesions. Another appears to aggravate
some forms and relieve others. So, while photo
therapy continues to attract some doctors,
controversy nevertheless swirls around it.
As for the general good of sunlight, it might be
explained by another recent finding. We now know
that bright light eases depression. So of course
photo therapy has value. Whatever else sunlight
does, it reduces our suffering by making us
feel better.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
I am grateful to Margaret Culbertson, UH Art and
Architecture Library, for suggesting this topic. My
thanks also to Dr. Charles D. Ericsson, U.T. Medical
Center, and dermatologist Dr. Jimmy Schmidt for their
counsel.
For biographical material on Finsen, see:
http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1903/finsen-bio.html
For material on the 1903 Nobel Prize in Medicine,
see:
http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1903/press.html
And for material on Rollier see: T. Dormady,
The White Death: A History of
Tuberculosis, New York: New York University
Press, 2000, pp. 157-159.
The form of tuberculosis that Finsen treated with
ultraviolet light was called Lupus
Vulgaris. (For information on present thinking
about photo therapy for regular Lupus -- which is
not the same thing, see, e.g.: http://www.infotech.demon.co.uk/Sun.htm
)
This pre-WW-II, pre-penicillin, poster for Red
Cross Christmas Seals captures the hopelesness that
we all once felt in the face of tuberculosis.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2003 by John H.
Lienhard.
