108 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vor VIE 
Even red had been used in days gone by in the treatment of small- 
pox. ‘‘John of Gaddesden, who wrote the famous medical treatise, the 
earliest in the English language, ‘Rosa Medicine,’ and who died in 1361, 
treated the son of King Edward I. for small-pox by covering him with 
scarlet blankets and a red counterpane, placing him in a room in a bed 
with scarlet hangings, gargling his throat with mulberry wine, and having 
him suck the juice of red pomegranates, and the patient recovered, never 
showing any trace of small-pox.” * * * ‘‘Also back in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth, the value of red curtains, red coverlets and red glass 
about the bed in small-pox cases was loudly proclaimed by certain doc- 
tors, who were regarded, as was John of Gaddesden, as charlatans by the 
orthodox physicians of the day.” (Cleaves’, “‘Light Energy.’’) So 
there were red bed-covers, and red globes in the bed for small-pox in the 
middle ages. Children were clothed in scarlet cloth, or kept in beds 
with scarlet curtains early in the 18th century in France, and the same 
custom prevailed in Japan. In Roumania, a custom from time immemorial 
is to cover the patient with red cloth, thinking that this attracts the erup- 
tion to the surface, and prevents complications. In Tonkin, the patient 
is placed in a sort of alcove, from which all light is excluded by numerous 
red hangings, and in a number of other diseases the same procedure is 
carried out; the custom is of great antiquity. 
Finsen’s plan involved absolute exclusion of the chemical rays, 
‘‘small-pox patients must be protected from the chemical rays with as 
much care as the photographer uses for his plates and paper.” A candle 
was permissible for artificial light while examining the patient, and while 
he was at his meals, but no brilliant illuminant was to be used. Treat- 
ment must be started as soon as possible after the rash appears, there is 
less hope after suppuration is established. Treatment must be continued 
until the vesicles have dried up. Even a short exposure to daylight 
would nullify the treatment. It was not claimed that death would al- 
ways’ be prevented, but that if taken in time and all rules strictly carried 
out, suppuration would generally not occur, the patients would recover 
without scars, or only with almost invisible ones. 
Four years later, 1898, Finsen published an Appendix to his paper 
on small-pox, setting forth the subsequent good results of many observers, 
still further confirming his plan. 
Had Finsen contributed nothing more to the sum of human know- 
ledge, he had well merited the gratitude of the entire civilized world, 
and his name would ever have been honoured on the roll of science, not 
alone for what he had actually accomplished, but even more for the new 
avenues of research opened up by his incessant labours. But great as 
