EFFECTS OF THE SUN ON LUNATICS.

Evening Star, Issue 4156, 23 June 1876, Page 3

EFFECTS OF THE SUN ON LUNATICS.

The 'Gazette dee Hospitaux' contains a curious article on this subject. Dr Ponza, director of the lunatic asylum at Alessandria (Piedmont), having conceived the idea that the solar rays might'have some curative power in diseases of the brain, communicated rutviews to Father Secchi, of Borne, who replied in the following termß :—" The idea of studying the disturbed state of lunatics in connection with magnetic perturbations and with the colored, especially violetgftight of the sun, is of remarkable importance, and I consider it worth being cultivated." Such light is easily obtained by filtering the Bolar rays through a glass of that color. " Violet," adds Father Secchi, "has something melancholy and depressive about it, which, physio logically, causes low spirits; hence, no doubt, poets have ■ draped melancholy in violet garments. Perhaps violet light may calm the nervous excitement of unfortunate maniacs." He then, in his letter, advises Dr Ponza to perform his experiments in rooms the walls of which are painted of the same color as the glass panes of the'windows, which should be as numerous as possible, in* order to favor the action of solar light", so that it may be admissib'e at any hour of the day. The patients should pass the night in rooms oriented to the east and to the south, and painted and glazed as above. Dr Ponza, following the instructions of the learned i Jesuit, prepared several roouoa in the manner described, and kept several patients there under observation. One of them, affected with

morbid taoiturnity, became gay and affable after three hours' stay in a red chamber; another, a maniac who refused all food, asked for Borne breakfast after haying stayed twenty-four hours in the same red chamber. In a blue one, a highly excited madman with a strait-waistcoat on was kept all day } an hour after he appeared much calmer. The action of blue light is very intense en the optic nerve, and Beems to cause a sort of oppression. A patient was made to pass the night in a violet chamber; on the following day he begged Dr Ponza to send him home, because he felt cured; and indeed he has been well ever since. Dr. Ponza's conclusions from his experiments are these: —"The violet rays are of all otherß, those that possess the most intense electro-chemical power; the red light is also very rich in calorific rays; blue light, on the contrary, is quite devoid of them, as well as of chemical and electric ones. Its beneficent influence is hard to explain; as it is the absolute negation of all excitement, it succeeds admirably m calming the furious excitement of maniacs'."