Dr A. Rollier 211 



these same children, only a few weeks before, arrived 

 at Dr Rollier's hospital as bed-ridden invalids. Some 

 suffered from diseased hips and legs ; others had terrible 

 lumps in their backs. Yet there they are, with limbs 

 healed and backs straightened, playing like a bunch of 

 athletes. 



How has the marvellous transformation been effected ? 

 The answer is — through the sun and Dr Rollier. For 

 months, perhaps, those children have lain in their beds 

 while the sun's rays have bathed their bodies and healed 

 them. Those rays of sunshine, which mankind neglected 

 for centuries, are the greatest of all germicides; they 

 destroy the disease germs which cause surgical tuber- 

 culosis (though, unhappily, not the germs of pulmonary 

 tuberculosis) if the doses are administered with care and 

 knowledge. 



In those last four words lies the clue to all the patient 

 work that has brought success to Dr Rollier's hospital 

 and fame to its founder. For if it is used in haphazard 

 fashion sunlight can be a terrible destroyer instead of 

 a gentle healer. Nowhere is this recognized more than 

 at Leysin, for Dr Rollier and his assistants, whose only 

 cure is their use of the sun, know full well how deadly 

 that sun can be. To expose a diseased body to the full 

 rays of the sun in summer would be fatal. The sunlight 

 has to be administered in small doses, which are gradually 

 strengthened as the body becomes accustomed to the 

 changed conditions. 



The method of treatment was described to us by some 

 one who has recently visited Leysin. He said : 



When a child goes to Leysin one foot will be exposed to the 

 sun for five minutes ; the next day both feet will be exposed. 

 Most carefully the child is watched, to see how the body is 

 reacting to the sun's rays, and perhaps a week later one whole 

 leg will be exposed, then the other. So it goes on until the 

 whole body is acclimatized and can stand the sun's rays for 



