May 20, 1922] 



NATURE 



663 



live in a cold damp climate, and consequently 

 never went through the intermezzo of a " British 

 warm." 



But which glacial epoch wrought all these miracles ? 

 The author, surely, does not mean the Permian glacia- 

 tion ; and certainly geologists tell us there was none 

 until towards the end of the Tertiary. Perhaps the 

 penguins had a Jurassic glacial epoch in their Ant- 

 arctic realm, while owls and petrels, which, by the 

 way, have as thick and fluffy and long-lasting Meso- 

 ptile coats as any penguins, owe these coats to our 

 Pleistocene bad times. We can scarcely date these 

 birds back into early Jurassic times hke the penguins, 

 which until their first interglacial ease-off must have 

 waddled about without feathers proper, all their lives 

 long moulting from one thick Mesoptile coat into 

 the next, generation after generation. This truly 

 startling picture results from the confusing of genera- 

 tions of feathers, which are ontogenetic items, and 

 stages in the evolution of the plumage, which are 

 phylogenetic conceptions. 



Archajopteryx hkewise does not fit into this view, 

 with its highly specialised remiges and rectrices, of 

 late Jurassic date, and certainly long before penguins 

 came into existence. 



Apropos of the question of the origin of feathers 

 from scales, we are told that the conversion of his 

 Cryptoptiles (consisting apparently of hollow epidermal 

 cones) into the Protoptiles took place " in some incom- 

 prehensible way," and that the Protoptiles "in some 

 way soon acquired the chief characteristics of true 

 feathers." Perhaps it was a case of miraculous muta- 

 tion ? But why incomprehensible, considering that 

 there are at least two reasonable possible explana- 

 tions, the only difficulty being which to choose. 

 What is less comprehensible is that the author did 

 not refer simply to that resume (itself a large essay) 

 by that experienced referee Prof. Keibel, in " Ergeb- 

 nisse . . .," 1896, supplemented more recently by 

 Schleidt (191 3) and Steiner (191 8), who adds a 

 literature list well-nigh complete and appalling by 

 its -size. H. F. G. 



The Advance of Heliotherapy. 

 By Dr. C. W. ,Saleeby. 



T' 



'HE treatment of disease by sunlight is the 

 newest of old things. It was systematically 

 practised by Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, 

 and perhaps we need not trouble ourselves with 

 questions of priority in our own times. At any rate, 

 the first clinic for the heliotherapy of surgical 

 tuberculosis was opened by Dr. A. RoUier at Leysin 

 in 1903, and at last it would appear that his methods 

 are to be followed throughout the world. Already 

 in France and Italy the sun cure is practised, and I 

 recorded lately in Nature (March 2) the finding of 

 many heliotherapeutic institutions on the Riviera, 

 from Cannes to San Remo. The city of Lyons wisely 

 sends its sick children to the Villa Santa Maria at 

 Cannes, and the Italians have recently established 

 the Istituto Elioterapico which I found outside San 

 Remo a few weeks ago. In our own country we have 

 Sir Henry Gauvain at the Treloar Hospital, Alton and 

 Hayling Island, and Dr. Gordon Pugh, at Queen 

 Mary's Hospital for Children at Carshalton. In the 

 United States, RoUier is being followed at Perrysburg, 

 near Buffalo. 



Now there comes an admirable volume ^ which 

 clearly presages the advance of heliotherapy into 

 Spain. The number of the journal in question is 

 devoted to a series of articles in Spanish by Dr. 

 Rollier and his assistants at Leysin. First of these 

 is a paper by Dr. Rosselet, a physicist, on the scientific 

 bases of heliotherapy, and Dr.'Amstad contributes a 

 paper on the sun cure of non-tuberculous diseases. 

 We shall do well not to associate the sun cure ex- 

 clusively with tuberculosis nor solely with the proved 

 antiseptic power of sunlight. The recent American 

 work, both at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins 

 Hospital, has shown that sunlight has potent in- 

 fluences upon nutrition and metabolism, and is 

 capable, for instance, of preventing and curing 

 rickets in a fashion hitherto unsuspected. Amstad 

 refers to rickets, of course, but he is evidently not 

 acquainted with this new American work. 



The publication is completed with a series of well- 

 produced plates which illustrate Rollier's methods 

 and show, in several " before and after " photographs, 



• Archives EspaBoles de Tisiologia, Num. 4. (Enero 1922, vol. 2. 

 Barcelona, Calle de Aragon, num. 282.) 



NO. 2742, VOL. 109] 



the all but miraculous results which he habitually 

 obtains. 



Madrid, like Munich and Mexico City, is a city which 

 teaches us that abundant tuberculosis may occur even 

 at high altitudes. Even " Sunny Spain " needs the 

 lessons of heliotherapy. At Mentone, a few weeks 

 ago, myself in broad and ravishing sunlight, I saw 

 a cobbler at work in a dark room, lit by a miserable 

 oil-lamp, the rays of which ill served to illuminate 

 his work. Answers of this order serve as reply to 

 those who ask why, for instance, if the sun be such 

 a preventive, there is any tuberculosis in India. 



In his fine article in this present publication. Dr. 

 Rollier insists, as ever, upon the superior value of the 

 early morning sun. This point needs perpetually 

 to be made. We tend to associate light and heat ; 

 so that, last year, the late Prof. Benjamin Moore 

 actually asked, in the Times, whether " too much 

 light and heat " may not be bad for us. The question 

 is illegitimate. Light and heat must be distinguished. 

 In Canada, according to my own observation there, 

 it is the combination of hght and cold that contributes 

 to the superb Canadian physique and vitality. In 

 Switzerland the same is true, and Leonard Hill has 

 shown us the physiological basis of this valuable 

 combination. But when thoughtless chnicians expose 

 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, for instance, to sun- 

 light in warm weather, perhaps in the afternoon, 

 perhaps even with exposure of the chest, and achieve 

 only fever and haemorrhage for their unfortunate 

 patients, we are told that heliotherapy is useless in 

 phthisis. 



It is certainly high time that the fundamentals of 

 the biology and physiology of light should be well 

 and truly laid. Dr. Rosselet, in his interesting con- 

 tribution, does not convince us that any one, as yet, 

 really knows how sunlight achieves its results, but we 

 shall expect to place heliotherapy upon broad and 

 deep foundations when the committee lately appointed 

 by the Medical Research Council gets to work. 

 Meanwhile we must hope for English translations of 

 " La Cure de Soleil " and the rest of RoUier 's works, 

 so that the present tragic farce of the treatment of 

 tuberculosis in this country, with its desolating 

 results, may yield to the intelligent use of sunlight. 



