Professor Lazarus-Barlow calls attention to the fact that it is
precisely those tubercular persons who tan easily who are said to
derive the greatest benefit from a sojourn at high altitude.
Very remarkable is a recently adopted machine which “pours ultra-violet
light through a funnel down the throat of a patient.” The new
apparatus, first used in London, is employed for treatment of various
mouth and throat diseases, “thus making it possible for patients to
take internal baths of artificial sunlight” (_Science_, February 26,
1926).
In England, where the sky is so often overclouded, it is natural that
much attention has been given to ultra-violet ray therapy. A recent
press dispatch tells us:
“London recently had 23 consecutive days on which no beam of the sun
could force its way through the mantle of cloud and fog which spread
over that section of England. Now the Britons are making artificial
suns that may be available for both indoor and outdoor illumination.
Arc lights throwing powerful ultra-violet rays are being installed in
beauty shops and hotels, and patrons are given opportunity to bathe
their bodies in this brilliance. These rays are being billed as more
potent than sun baths, and citizens who have small chance to see the
orb of day get their sunshine and their medicine at one swoop.”
Two Indian scientists, S. S. Bhatnagar and R. B. Lal, of the University
of the Punjab, Lahore, discovered in 1925 that germs grow faster
when exposed to “polarized” light than to ordinary light. (Ordinary
light—according to the undulatory theory—is due to vibrations
transverse to the direction of the ray, but varying so rapidly as
to show no particular direction of their own, the fronts of the
light-waves crisscrossing at all angles. When, by any means, these
vibrations are given a definite direction, the light is said to be
_polarized_, the fronts of the waves being all arranged in the same
direction, though the path of the rays may be plane, elliptical,
circular, or rotary, according to the method of polarization employed.)
The Indian experimenters took cultures of the germs of typhoid fever
and cholera, and exposed one set to ordinary light, and another to a
beam of polarized light. The latter multiplied much faster than did the
germs under ordinary light.
It was demonstrated in 1925 by Dr. Elizabeth S. Semmens, of Bedford
College, London, that the digestion of starch takes place more readily
under polarized light than in ordinary light.
Prolonged exposure to the ultra-violet rays will destroy any germs
known to science. (Cathode rays—which are shorter than ultra-violet
rays—will kill not only germs, but insects as well, by means of a
device developed by Prof. W. D. Coolidge.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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