CHAPTER XVIII 



DR SUNSHINE 



How Dr A . Rollier Founded the Most Wonderful 



School in the World 



MANY remarkable medical discoveries have been 

 made during the past forty years — discoveries 

 which have given doctors new weapons for use 

 in the age-long fight with disease— but no recent develop- 

 ment in medical science is more inspiring than the re- 

 discovery of the sun as the great healer. 



We write rediscovery, for the healing powers of the 

 sun were well known in the days of ancient Greece. 

 Then for centuries this great natural source of healing 

 was neglected, while men and women nursed their sick- 

 ness behind walls that shut out the healing ultra-violet 

 rays. Those centuries were the real Dark Ages, and it 

 was not until the closing years of the nineteenth century 

 that a young Dane, Dr Niels R. Finsen, began to study 

 the action of sunlight on certain diseases, and particu- 

 larly its action in cases of lupus and other forms of what 

 had until then been called surgical tuberculosis. 



Dr Finsen was mainly interested in artificial sunlight 

 — the reproduction, by scientific means, of the valuable 

 ultra-violet rays when the natural sunlight was not avail- 

 able. 



The wonderful results which Finsen obtained persuaded 

 other investigators to study the action of sunlight itself. 

 Thus began what has been called the modern ' sun- 

 worship.' That was about thirty years ago, and so 

 rapidly has sun-worship spread that to-day many towns, 

 including London, make provision for sun-bathing, so 



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