Curing Disease with Electric Light.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 147, 22 June 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

Curing Disease with Electric Light.

HERE has been instituted in the London Hospital, at the suggestion of our good Queen Alexandra., an installation of Dr. Finsen's ap-

paratus for the treatment of lupus by means of the concentrated of the concentrated rays of the electric light, the rays that produce heat being excluded, while the chemical rays are alone utilised.

Lupus, as many of my readers may be aware, is an ailment allied to both scrofula and cancer, and it is in all respects a terrible ailment, seeing that the ravages it may cause in the tissues are comparable to those which cancer itself produces.. That lupus is caused by the growth and multiplica-

tion of a particular germ in the tissues admits of no doubt, and Dr. Finsen's light treatment probably acts through its powers of destroying the disease microbes and of stimulating the tissues^with healthy healing.

In a medical journal some time ago there was published a full account of Dr. Finsen's treatment, with illustrations showing the state of patients before and after treatment. The results are so satisfactory that he ma~y have little hesitation in saying that the light treatment of lupus is an illustration of the discovery of a real remedy for a very serious disease. The Queen defrayed the cost of the first installation of Finsen's appara^ tvs at the London HospPtal. Let this noble action for ever redound to the credit of a good woman whose thought for her afflicted subjects must be productive of great results. I should like to see some philanthropists establish Finsen's apparatus in

every great hospital in the land. If lupus can be cured by this treatment, while consumption can be mastered by the open air cure, we shall hart added largely to the medical and scientific triumphs of our times.

The Finsen treatment is a slow process. Th*e light has to be concentrated each day for not more than an hour on a small portion only of the diseased region, and a nurse has to watch the patient narrowly all the while. Two lights can accommodate eights patients at one time, and forty patients per day are attended to during the five hours the cure is in operation. With a third light, in process of installation in London, 60 patients per day will be treated, but even this number (having regard to the slowness of the cure) can represent only a fractional part of the mass waiting to be cured. —

DR. ANDEEW WILSON.