Soaking Up The Sun: Light Therapy, an Early 20th Century Cure-All

These steampunk-looking specs go beyond serving looks; they functioned as important and necessary eye protection, the pair on the bottom being specifically designed for use during light therapy treatments. Light therapy, or phototherapy, as it is scientifically known, has been around in various forms for many thousands of years. The ancient Greeks and Romans practiced sunbathing, and the Incas, Assyrians, and ancient Egyptians all worshipped sun gods.

In its modern form, light therapy can be traced to Niels Ryberg Finsen, a Dane who investigated the treatment in an attempt to cure his own Niemann-Pick disease, a rare metabolic disorder. He published a paper, "On the effects of light on the skin," in 1893, which argued that different wavelengths of light have certain medical benefits. He used this treatment with some success on cases of lupus vulgaris, a form of tuberculosis which appears on the skin. In 1903, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for his work, though, sadly, he didn’t live long to enjoy it. His light therapy treatments were not effective for his own ailments, and he passed in 1904 at the age of 43.

One of Finsen’s fans was John Harvey Kellogg, director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, health reformer, entrepreneur, and inventor of his eponymous cornflakes. Kellogg was extremely taken with the idea of light therapy and visited Finsen’s clinic at the Axel Reyn Institute in Denmark. He came away impressed, writing in an undated manuscript: “The streets in the vicinity of the Institute almost swarmed with people who had lost ears and noses through tuberculosis disease, or whose faces bore huge sores that had resisted every other mode of treatment. In the Institute we were shown scores of persons whose once ghastly features had been restored to healthy comeliness by the miracle-working sunlight.”

Kellogg also visited the Institute of Heliotherapy in Leysin, Switzerland, run by Dr. Auguste Rollier, another luminary in the field of light therapy. There, Kellogg came across some strange sights, such as children skiing down alpine slopes wearing nothing except a pair of boots and a white loincloth—the better to soak up the sun! Many of Rollier’s patients were afflicted with tuberculosis, and it was thought that the combination of antibacterial sunlight and cold mountain air would eradicate the disease. Like Finsen, Rollier appears to have had success treating lupus vulagaris, as well as rickets, a disease caused by deficiencies of vitamin D, calcium, or phosphorus, which made bones soft and malformed. His patients spent most of their time at the clinic donning the white loincloths and little else, engaging in a variety of activities from sunbathing to sports, outdoor lessons, or crafts like basket-weaving.

Back home in Michigan, Kellogg attempted to recreate much of what he had learned from both Finsen and Rollier, down to encouraging children to spend time outside in the same white loincloths. However, Battle Creek was a far cry from the strong, high-altitude light of the Swiss Alps, so, building on Finsen’s work with arc lamps, Kellogg built his own but increased its mobility with caster wheels, allowing physicians to place it wherever desired, and added a fan to cool patients down under the intense heat the lamps generated. Soon after, he created what he christened an “electric light bath” or “light cabinet,” a cabinet filled with incandescent light bulbs and mirrors into which a patient would be rolled or sit on a stool, with their head protruding, while their body absorbed thermic rays from the light bulbs. This was used to treat a wide variety of ailments, including kidney disease, stroke, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, as well as for general rejuvenation. Dr. Kellogg’s light bath garnered international interest and was soon being used by King Edward VII of England for his gout, as well as Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm II. Battle Creek Sanitarium became a retreat for celebrities looking for a health boost, boasting patrons such as Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Henry Ford, Mary Todd Lincoln, and President Taft, before shuttering during the Great Depression.

Of course, while light therapy was at least helpful in reducing symptoms of diseases like lupus vulgaris and rickets, in many of the ailments it was used to treat, it was harmless at best and useless at worst. By the mid-1920s, it was being used in such a wide variety of illnesses that the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council established a committee to investigate its effectiveness, naming Dr. Dora Colebrook to perform the research. Colebrook had previously worked at the North Islington Infant Welfare Centre, where she had used light therapy to treat sickly children. Consequently, that was one of the first areas she chose to investigate, along with varicose ulcers, both areas where light therapy was accepted as a cure. In both instances, she found no beneficial effects, though her research greatly upset practitioners as well as producers of lamps and light cabinets. 

By the 1950s, light therapy had largely fallen out of favor, and sunbathing had simply become a leisure activity, though a golden tan continued to signal health and vitality in the popular imagination. These days, light therapy is limited to treating a handful of conditions, and physicians generally recommend against direct absorption of UV rays, instead imploring patients to wear adequate protection and reapply sunscreen every few hours.

Enjoy the summer sunshine, and don’t forget your sunscreen and shades!

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