The Savannah morning news., 1901-12-29
LIGHT TO HEAL DISEASES.
CANCER AND CONSUMPTION TO DIS
APPEAR UNDER THE MYsTE-
RIOUS INFLUENCE.

The Apparatus Invented by Prof.
Finsen, the Danish savant, De-
cOmposeE Powerful Ray of
Light, So That the Heat Is Divert
ed and the Actinic Rays Alone
Are Directed Upon the Patient
with Extraordinary Healing Eff
fects-Cancer Is Eradicated as IL
by the Knife-COnsumption Cured
ny Another Form of the Light,
which seems to Penetrate to the
Lungs and Destroy the Germs.
The X-Rny Used as Auxiliary
but Guardedly, as IL Is n Danger
Gus Agency in Destroying Tissue.
Copyright, 1901. by Elias Lisle.)
Within a few years there has arisen
a school of therapeutics so different
from all the other forms of treatment
for diseases and so simple in it's opera
tions. that it would almost seem to lie
without the limits of medical science.
Light is the agency of healing. With
different rays and combinations of
rays it seeks to strike at the very root
of disease, destroy the deadly germs
that infect the blood and correct the
abnormal cellular growths that give
rise to many of the most .hideous and
malignant of human ills. For a long
time the results of such treatment were
| looked on with doubt, but now the ex-
periments in the laboratory of Prof.
Finsen of Copenhagen. Denmark; of
DR.. Andrew Clark of the Middlesex
Hospital, England; of DR.. Hopkins of
Brooklyn of DIR. Williams of Boston;
and in hospitals in New York. St.
| Louis and Chicago, seem to show that
the two greatest scourges of the pres
ent age, cancer and consumption, can
| be eradicated by the simple action of
intense light, while other minor dis
| eases succurnb to 1t.
To Prof Finsen belongs the credit
of oto-therapy. Experiments salts
| fed him that certain germs could not
live in sunlight. He then set about
could be directed upon the human
flesh without harm, or pain. The
problem was to eliminate the great
heat which accompanies powerful rays
of light. After years of labor he de-
| vised a tube containing a quartz crys-
| tai lens, which decomposes an electric
light of great power, diverting the
1
directing the heatless, actinic rays,
blue, ultraviolet and violet, down
through the tube upon the subject.
This apparatus has been mechanically
improved by DR.. Hopkins, so that, by
means of a hanging bracket, the ray
may be ready directed upon any part
of the body of the patient, stretched on
cot beneath it. The operating room
| of a photo-therapeutic laboratory is
81. nil other
room, in it's simplicity. There is the
ray apparatus and the cot for the pa
tient; that is all. Besides the opera
tor, one nurse is in attendance.
Picture to yourself a huge hanging
| basket of ornamental iron, swung from
the ceiling, and anonymously sprout-
ing on one side into a length of shiny
brass telescope. This is the apparatus
by which it is proposed to con-
quer the most dreadful of human mall
aides. cancer. Inside the three foot
circle of the black iron is an electric
light carbon so arranged that when
the electric current is turned on, the
light glows through the telescope
tube. The current strength is so am
peres. and the light produced is so
dazzling that the eye can not bear 1t;
and the attending surgeon must go
hooded like a falcon. Against the
wall it's $1,000 candle power shows
like the brightest of sunlight. This
radiance, poured down through the
tube, would quickly roast the flesh
| upon which it falls, were not the
heat rays diverted by the quartz lens.
This lens is the difficult part of the
instrument to obtain. Nothing serves
the purpose so well as quartz, but a
piece of quartz from which a two-and-
three quarter-inch lens can be cut,
hawless and perfect, is rare and ex~
pensive. One operator in this country
applied to a number of optical firms
without success, and finally went to
Tiffany & Co, who placed a ton of
quartz at his disposal Out of this the
largest perfect crystal he could get
would cut into a lens little less than
two inches. He had finally to send to
Copenhagen.
Now for the action of this merciful
surgery of light. Suppose the patient
to be suffering from lupus, that cam
Ger which destroys the face obliterat-
ing as dreadfully as leprosy itself, ev-
cry appearance of humanity. He is
laid upon a cot under the apparatus.
The tube is drawn down until 1t stops
within an inch of the liberated sur
face. There is a sizzling sound as the
operator turns on the current; the sun
bright radiance glitters on the wall and
pours down through the quartz lens
upon the gnawing cancer. and, invis-
IDLY, the miracle is working. For an
hour The patient must lie there. The
light covers a spot about an inch in
| diameter. When the hour is up that
spot has paled a little from the angry
red around it, Next day another spot
is treated; on the next still another.
| The treatment is daily; could be I'M
dergone half dozen times day If
there were time. for the subject feels
no sensation whatever. There is no
physical or nervous strain. Present.
| ly a strange thing is seen to have
happened. About these edge, where the
sore has been most malignant, sound
scar tissue begins to form. The can
Ger is beingr restricted and contracted.
| Now and again II makes a rally, press
ing forward its angry signals, only TO
be beaten back by the destroying and
healing ray. The end of the battle e
always the same. The lupus disap-
pears and in it's place is sound scar
tissue. Not infrequently skin grating
is restored to to restore that part OF
the face, provided no organs have
been destroyed, to its oroginal appear
ance.
In the malignant cancers-sarcoma
of the breast and others. the roots of
which lie deep-the Finsen ray has
done work quite as wonderful 1t works
slower in these cases than in lupus
where the disease is on the surface, for
the rays have little penetrating power:
nevertheless there are complete cures
to its credit in cases beyond hope of
IA -