LIGHT, THE ORIGIN OF HEALTH. 739 
of these germs, is just the exposure of them to direct sun- 
shine and fresh air; and I am perfectly convinced that in © 
this treatment the direct sunshine has not yet been used 
enough. When we send Réntgen rays through the body. 
it illuminates the whole interior, like a flood of light in a 
dark room. But these rays are only one form of light; 
and there can be no question but many of the chemical 
and invisible rays in direct sunlight go right through our 
bodies, like these rays; and in going through they kill the 
bacilli in the lungs. 
I would keep consumptives in the sun, with their chests 
bare, until the skin became the colour of a bushman’s arms. 
And with our 2200 hours of sunshine a year we can do 
this without any trouble. The bacilli which produce plague, 
typhoid, cholera, and indeed, the whole family of them, 
are just denizens of darkness, and they die when exposed 
'to the sunshine. In this, the first year of her reign, Queen 
Alexandra is instituting a treatment in the London 
hospitals, by light, of a severe skin-disease called “lupus,” 
which is produced in unhealthy subjects by one of these 
bacilli. 
The day will yet come when the consumptive bacillus will 
not be allowed to murder 60,000 victims a year in England 
alone (and probably a million a year in the various countries 
of Europe and America) whilst sunshine, the great remedy, 
dances around us in such profusion. In the treatment of 
typhoid fever, a hospital matron recently gave me a wonder- 
ful instance of how the sun will assist to cure. In Western 
Australia, she had charge of some hundreds of patients, and 
of those treated in tents which allowed the light to come 
through freely. she never lost one, whilst many died among 
the patients in hospital. 
Sunshine, when passed through a prism, breaks up into 
a number of different coloured rays, such as are seen in the 
rainbow, and these rays have wonderfully different effects 
on living organisms. The first colour is red, second orange, 
third yellow, fourth green, fifth blue, six indigo, seventh 
violet. Plants kept constantly under the red rays are 
stimulated by them, and grow much faster than in whole 
sunlight, whilst similar plants’ placed in blue rays 
at the other end of the spectrum, do not grow 
at all—indeed, ultimately die out—although the tem- 
perature and moisture are kept up equal to those 
m the red rays. In Nature, when the sun _ is 
exerting all its powers to ripen the pips in the apple, it 
