THE SUN CURE IN ENGLAND.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3132, 28 August 1922, Page 7

THE SUN CURE IN ENGLAND.

(fjy Dr C. W. Salecby, F.R.S.E.)

Descending from Ley sin, on the cogwheel railway, to the level of the Lake of Geneva, a few weeks ago, I asked myself the vital question, Can these wonders of healing and restoration to a vigorous working lile be performed anywhere eke but in the mountain air. thousands of feet up in the sky ? The answer to this question is one of life and death for an urban people like ourselves, who must live by our industry in great cities at or near sea-level. For if the altitude of herein he necessary for its conquest of tuberculosis, no lessons of general application to public health and happiness and efficiency can bo drawn from it for ourselves.

First, let me say that, on its purely scientific and experimental' side, this superb subject is as yet practicality unexplored. Writing in comment on a recent article of mine on this subject, Professor W. M. BayKn, F.R.S.. the eminent physiologist of University Cofl 1 - lege, has pointed' out that we have not yet begun the scientific study of light in its biological aspects. (X-rays:, yes, but mere sunlight, no!) When studying the work of R oilier in Switzerland lately, T was informed by Dt Edouard' Ceresole, of Lausanne, himself an advocate of the snn-cure. that be was recently in New York and asked Dr Alexis Carrel, the Nobel Prize-winner and originator of the famous Carrel 1 treatment for wounds', what subject he wais going to study next. "Light" was the answer, and 1 n. great experimental solarium is now to be equipped upon thereof of the Rockefeller Institute, in the smokeless air of that marvellous city, for the serious beginning, at long last, in A.D. 1921, of the study of the light which createsand maintains l all our lives.

But certainly we must study our own problems for ourselves, and the 'Medical Research Council', which was established under the Insurance Act and is, in my judgment, the most valuable fruit of that Act. has a glorious opportunity now before it. Meanwhile, the critical question whether the light of day can save and prevent, even at the levels at which we live in this country, can he positively answered, in the most satisfactory and l significant way. How it acts, whether on the mountains or at sea-level, no one. T believe, yet knows; that it acts, at any level, is a. completely demonstrated fact.

In pursuing my study of this subject I have recently visited the Lord Mayor Theloar’s Cripples’ Hospital at Alton, in Hampshire, and its seaside branch at Hayling Island. To read reports and even to study published photographs and radiographs is valuable hut to see and touch for oneself is invaluable. I have done so. and am a thousandfold satisfied. Under the auspices of this most lovely charity, originally started in relief of cripples by Sir William Treloar, and now demonstrating, as I here assert, that tuberculosis should not exist in our country —Sir Henry Gauvain, the medical superintendent, is now gaining results just like those which Holder has been obtaining in the mountains for 18 years past. Even in our latitudes, and at sealevel, the sun, our own English sun. against whom all our coal-smoke-cursed cities blaspheme, can work the natural miracles which we associate primarily witli the name of Leysin. Let no reader suppose that it interests me one whit to be concerned, directly or indirectly, in increasing the number of patients who may seek succour from the sun. through the'hands of Dr Hollier or Sir Henry Gauvain. Those two clinicians, whom \ am happy to call my friends, will be the first to understand what I mean by saying find I am out not to send them patients, but to deprive them of all their patients. and leave them seated in thendeserted sanatoria, their occupations gone. ('nfortnnately, we shall not reach that ideal goal to-morrow; many vested interests, many imbecile habits, inherited stupidities 1 , must bei abolished first. And meanwhile we are breeding the diseases of darkness, as I call them, on all bands, and must deal with the dread results. 1 know no merciful cause, in our country, more worthy or more lucrative in its returns of life and health and usefulness than this Treloar Hospital. Never shall I forget standing in the sun and listening to those little girls, on their beds under its healing light, singing “I passed by your window,” for my refreshment after a. more strictly clinical hour. . And let the reader who feels that this beautiful work of saving those whom the surgeons, with knife and saw, cannot save (and should, for the most part, be prohibited; from touching), must be supported by bis purse—let such, a reader remember the real significance of Leysin in the Swiss sky—or Hayling Island, on our English C hannel —that if and when we restore the light of day to our urban lives the diseases of darkness will vanish' like all shadows and hobgoblins and terrors of the night before the dayspring from on high. All tin's is possible. In Pittsburg last year I saw the smoke fiend exercised, and recently I learnt that, following a lecture of mine at Shaw, in Lancashire, in January, they have restored the lijdit and cleansed the air there by the. Pittsburg methods. So “it moves.” I hope that John Huskin knows, who said: —“The beginning of art is in making our country clean, and our people beautiful.”