Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1903-08-12
wEDNRsDAy.AUGusr ~, 1908.
Dangerous rInls.

III purple walls ana red tinted
window surrounded you for month,
with no color but purple around you,
by the end of that time you would
be madman. No matter how
strong your brain might be it would
not stand the strain and it is doubt
full if you would ever recover your
reason. For purple is the most dan
gerous color there is-lin its effect on
the brain, which it reaches by way
of the eye.
A splash or two of any other color
in the room would save your reason
for some time longer; but dead
purple would kill you eventually, as
surely as would foul air. Scarlet is
as bad, but scarlet has different
effect. Itproduces what is called
homicidal mania--a madness that
drives its victims to xiii his fellows,
especially his nearest relatives.
Even on animals scarlet has this
effect. 1t will drive bull or tiger
to charge naked spear. But purple
on the contrary, brings on mel
ancholy or suicide mania.
Blue, as long as there is no trace
of red in it, stimulates the brain, and
helps it; but its effect on your nerves,
if you are saturated with it and can
not get away from it, is terrible.
Scientists class blue as a kind of
drug in its effects on the brain. 1t
excites the imagination and gives a
craving for music and stagecraft, but
il has reaction that wrecks the
nerves. If you doubt it, stare hard
at a large sheet of bright blue paper
or cloth--not flowers, for there is a
good deal of green in their blue--and
you will find that it will make your
eyes ache and give you restless,
uneasy feeling.
Green, on the other hand, is the
king of colors, and no amount of it
jcan do you any harm. On the con-
trary, it soothes the whole system,
and preserves the eyesight. If you
were shut up in an artificial green
light for month it would develop
your eyesight immensely but it
would be fatal, because when you
returned TO the world you would be
utterly unable to stand ordinary
lights and colors, and you would
certainly contract ophthalmia, orpos-
sibly destroy the optic nerve alto
gether, unless you were very mindful
to take great care.
Most people imagine the sky, in
clear weather, to be blue. 1t is
really white, tinged with green. 1t
is only the distance and clearness
that makes it seem blue. Green is so
soothing that it makes big difference
int he length of an illness, helping the
system to fight the disease, and
nearly all hospital wards have every
possible detail about them colored
green. Sage green is the most
soothing tint of all, metallic green,
however, is by no means 80 good.
Solitary confinement in a yellow
cell for six weeks will hopelessly
weaken any system and produce
chronic hysteria. A long enough
course of it will produce foolish
lunacy, and even on guinea pig or
rabbit will drive the animal at last
to either bite and wound itself, or
reduce it to such state of nervous
ness that it will die of sheer fright
if suddenly startled. On the other
hand, if you are not smothered with
it, yellow is the healtiest, cheriest
color there is, and will make dark
room bright and habitable, when
even green would be cold and depress-
ing. But to be well "soused" with
yellow, day and night and to be
unable TO get away from 1T, would
bring you to nervous madness inside
of two months at the outside.
Sheer dead white, unbroken, will
destroy your eyesight as surely as a
cataract" would if you are exposed
to it for few days--a week at least.
1t kills the optic nerves and the sight
goes out like candle, while the
effect on the brain is so maddening
that blindness is almost a relief.
This is why Arctic explorers have to
wear colored goggles" of green
tinted glass; otherwise "snow blind
ness" as it is called, and which is
really "white blindness" is almost q
certainty. Even in the polar re-
gions, though the white is not COM
plete, the sky breaks it. If it did
not, no man could keep his eyesight
there without glasses Bits.
The annual meeting Of the South
Carolina State Sunday School Asso.