HEALING LIGHT.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 May 1923, Page 1

HEALING LIGHT.

MAEJ'V f SIiI.HJiKX. I ,()>.’ DON . -M a rch .1 1 In i\ little* canvas-covered cubicle it : lie Loudon Hospital twelve moiTV children litisk in light, almost ns iier.v as the sunshine which heats upon U'.> sands at .Margate in the height id summer. No matter what the conditions tire outside, whether it he rain, snow, < r foe;, here in this corner of the hospital there is always sunshine—or its nearest mechanical equivalent. I his cubicle is one of the great possibilities of medical science to which Lord ICnutsford refers in his appeal tor funds for the hospital. The children who joke and laugh and sing all dav long are all patients sintering from lupus, and this cubicle is nil that the great hospital can with the funds at its disposal provide for iheir treatment by the light-ctoe method.

“AVc are only just learning what properly applied light will do,” said Lord Kmitsford. “Hitherto wo have treated lupus will) the application c! light from an electric lamp applied direct to an affected part, but here in this cubicle wo have discovered that if children, or, for the matter of that adults, are stripped and the ligi't allowed to play all over their bodies, it is much more effective.

“Even our makeshift arrangement of an ordinary carbon electric * arc i« accomplishing wonders. I lie arc is

lowered so that the light from it boat* directly upon their bodies, and r great is the tonic effect that ailing and weakly children put on weight and improve in their general lieaLh and incidentally they become asbrvttn ns berries—sunburnt as if by a seaside

“And now our doctors think that they will be able to cure rickets the same method. Think what that means to thousands of children in thi* immediate neighbourhood alone. Lu. wo only have this miserable cubicle made of AVillesdcn canvas stretched on tilings like wooden clothes horses, in wltich we are only able to treat twelve patients at a time, and thoi only for short periods, because we have to reserve it first for girls and then for boys. “What we want is money to build a proper light room away from the ordinary lupus ward where our cubicle is at present.”