Missed our 2011 exhibition “Our Friend, the Sun: Images of Light Therapeutics, 1901-1944”? Here’s a sneak preview of the digital exhibition currently under construction. You can find the full exhibition catalogue by curator Dr. Tania Anne Woloshyn here. And stay tuned for more!

Röntgen rays and electro-therapeutics: with chapters on radium and phototherapy / by Mihran Krikor Kassabian. Philadelphia ; London: J. B. Lippincott, 1907.

This photograph depicts a patient receiving phototherapy treatment via an arc light developed by Niels Ryberg Finsen, the Danish physician who pioneered the treatment of disease (notably lupus vulgaris) through exposure to specific wavelengths of light.

“Finsen’s method consists in concentrating actinic light, through rock-crystal lenses, on any desired part, rendered as exsanguine as possible by means of pressure, because the presence of blood acts as a barrier to the passage of the chemical rays to the tissues.” (Kassabian, 515)

Further reading

Simon Carter. Rise and Shine: Sunlight, Technology, and Health. New York: Berg, 2007.

Tania Anne Woloshyn, “‘Kissed by the Sun’: Tanning the Skin of the Sick with Light Therapeutics, c.1890–1930,” in Kevin Siena and Jonathan Reinarz, eds. A Medical History of Skin: Scratching the Surface (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), chap. 12.