Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1876 — The Effects of Light on Lunatics. [ARTICLE]

The Effects of Light on Lunatics.

Dr. Ponza,{director of the lunatic asylum at Alessandria, Piedmont, having conceive! the idea that the solar rave might have some curative power in diseases of the brain, communicated his views to Father Beochi, of Rome.who replied In the following terms: “ The idea of studying the disturbed state of lunatics in connection with magnetic perturbation* and with the colored, especially violet, light of the sun, is of remarkable Importance, and I consider it worth being cultivated.” Such light Is easily obtained by filtering the solar rays through a, glass of that color. “Violet,” adds Father Secchi, “ has something melancholy and depressive' about it, which, physiologically, causes low spirits; hence, no doubt, poets have draped melancholy in violet garnicbts. Perhaps violet light may calm the nervous excitement of unfortunate maniacs.”

He then, in his letter, advises Dr. Ponza to perform his experiments in rooms the walls of which are painted of the same color as the glass panes of the windows, which should be as numerous as possible, in order to favor the action of solar light, so that it may be admissible at any hour of the day. The patients should pass the night in rooms oriented to the east and to the south, and painted and glazed as above. Dr. Ponza, following the instructions of the learned Jesuit, prepared several rooms in the manner described and kept several patients there under observation. One of them, affected with morbid taciturnity, became gay and affable after a three hours’ stay in a red chamber; another, a maniac who refused all food, asked for some breakfast after having stayed twenty, four hours in the same red chamber. In a blue one, a highly-excited madman with a strait waistcoat on was kept all day; an hour after he appeared much calmer. The action of blue light is very intense on the optic nerve, ana seems to cause a sort of oppression. A patient was made to pass the night in a violet chamber; on the following day, he begged Dr. Ponza to send him home, because he felt himself cured; and indeed he has been well ever since. Dr. Ponza’s conclusions from his experiments are these: “ The violet rays are, of all others, those that possess the most intense electro-chemical power; the red light is also very rich in calorific rays: blue light, on the contrary, is quite devoid of them as well as of chemical and electric ones. Its beneficent influence is hard to explain; as it is the absolute negation of all excitement, it succeeds admirably in calming the fiirious excitement of maniacs.”—Manchester (.Eng.) Examiner.