The Physiological Action of Ultra-Violet Radiation and its Use in the Home

Abstract

THE founder of the science of actinotherapy was Finsen, and he published his first paper on the subject of ultra-violet radiation in 1893. His efforts were directed to the cure of lupus (the wolf), that disfiguring disease of the skin caused by the tubercle bacillus, a disease which so often causes those attacked by it to hide themselves away in order to avoid the gaze of their fellows. This new local form of treatment devised by Finsen was a wonderful success, and it was only Finsen's early death, at the age of forty-three years, that prevented him from carrying out other most important applications of the treatment. He left at his death the complete designs for a clinic in which investigations were to be undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining more exactly what affections would lend themselves to treatment by general light baths, and among the diseases in which this treatment was to be used, he expressly mentioned tuberculosis.