100 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vo.. VIII. 
is the beneficial action of the sun’s rays accepted, but the hurtful effect 
in certain cases is also known; thus, while sun-baths are given to some 
patients, others are kept from the light.* 
Systematic treatment of disease by means of light may be said to date 
from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Professor Lobel of 
Jena set forth in definite terms the conditions in which light treatment 
might be employed with benefit, and those in which it was to be avoided, 
and described a special apparatus by means of which such treatment could 
be carried out. From this time forward, much careful investigation has 
been carried on, and much patient work has been done in placing light 
treatment upon a scientific basis. 
But it remained for the immortal Finsen to gather together these 
varied threads of evidence in favour of the powerful influence of light upon 
the health, to crystallize the many and most valuable discoveries of other 
learned men to whom he never failed to render due credit for their service 
to the cause of science, and to carry on his own most ingenious and extended 
series of observations, remarkable most in their strange simplicity. 
Born on the bleak Faroe Islands, the greater part of his youth— 
until his twenty-first year—was spent in Iceland, the weird land of 
storms and wintry night, and strange contrasts of light and darkness, 
almost dramatic in their vividness. Even in his boyhood the effect of 
light possessed a great charm for him; he noticed the action the rays of 
the sun had upon some animals, and well he knew the depressing effects 
of sunless days. All this proved an incentive later on to study most search- 
ingly the action and influence of light upon health. 
When he graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1890 as 
Doctor of Medicine, after spending eight years there, he was already a 
confirmed invalid, although only thirty years of age, in fact he had been 
in wretched health since his twenty-third year, and now his heart, liver, 
and organs of digestion were so hopelessly deranged that active practice 
of his beloved profession was absolutely impossible. Immediately upon 
graduation he was appointed Prosector of Anatomy at the University of 
Copenhagen under Professor Chiewitz; they still use at the Anatomical 
College a dissecting knife invented by him. For three years he contented 
himself with acting in the capacity of prosector at the University, and 
here we find him in 1893 in the little city of Copenhagen, poor, unknown, 
handicapped in body, but with keen powers of observation, the faculty 
of investigation highly developed, a rare intelligence, and with an indomit- 
able will in spite of his almost constant physical suffering. From before 
the close of his student life he had been experimenting with light, always 
* Freund. 
my et 
