768 
H. DE VARIGNY. 
An ig;nored or rather unknown form of phototherapy must 
also be mentioned in the beneficent action of light on the whole 
organism. It is thus that fine weather is useful to health, that 
sun baths in the country, on the seashore and where the skin is 
more exposed to luminous rays. This stimulating action is not 
doubtful. Two Swiss experimenters have recently tried to 
prove it, and MM. Kronecker and Marti have had no trouble to 
show that rats kept in darkness have less red corpuscles and 
hsemoglobine than those exposed to light, and also that rats 
living exposed to light night and day had more than ordinary 
animals submitted to ordinary conditions. But they have also 
shown that one must not be more royalist than the king, as the 
continued effect of light wears out. They say : “ The noise of 
the factories (electric plants which lighted the rats during the 
night) interfered perhaps with the advantageous effect of light.” 
This is possible, but 1 would rather believe that beyond a cer¬ 
tain point the artificial excitation of light will cease. Alternat¬ 
ing from good light in daytime to favorable darkness at night, 
seems to me better. 
There is a serious result to be obtained from phototherapy. 
The American physician was right when a few years ago he 
proposed that every house should have on its roof a glass sola- 
rium^ heated and lighted by the sun, where each one could go 
when the sky was clear, where children could be exposed to 
sunlight when circumstances would not permit outdoor expos¬ 
ure. Light is an exceptional agent of health ; it plays one of 
the most important parts in life ; it is a disinfectant of the first 
order, and let us have our doors and our windows widely open 
to pure air, to the light of the day, for us to be healthy, and to 
kill the microbes. 
The advent of the Tammany Hall dynasty has thrown all 
the veterinarians holding city positions into a state of trembling 
excitement, as they hourly anticipate the incision of the inevi¬ 
table political axe into their cervical region. Efficiency in 
office has no bearing upon political affiliation. 
