BLUE IS RESTFUL.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 June 1926, Page 18

BLUE IS RESTFUL.

SICK ROOM COLOURS. ’ < iff ’. V We know that animals are sensitive to colours. Red enrages a bull, while for some unknown reason blue, is disliked by sparrows and certain other birds. Even insects have similar preferences, both ants and mosquitoes have been tested, and while the former do not like to be placed under blue glass, the latter prefer light to dark colours. Human beings vary in their colour preferences. Some pepole cannot live in a room with red walls, and others get quite ill in a dark blue room. On the other hand red is a good colour for the smallpox patient, and medical men of old, who knew more than we think they did, always hung a room with red to prevent the wounds caused by this disease from leaving scars. Experiments made during the war show that certain colours are stimulating and others soothing. At a hospital at Denmark Hill colours were used for patients suffering from shellshock. A patient suffering from neurasthenia was cured of violent headaches by being put in a purple room, but when a patient suffering from hysteria was placed in the same room he became hopelessly distressed and had to be removed. He was' then placed in a room the walls and furniture of which were of a primrose yellow, and in this he quickly recovered. This room had a sky blue ceiling. For a patient lying on his back the ceiling colour is more important than that of the walls. Roughly speaking, blue, mauve, and violet are the colours stimulate the tired brain. But some that soothe, while green and yellow colours have more particular effects. A