constantly circulating through the reservoirs or water screens. To further concentrate and cool the rays a compressor is provided, which consists of two rock crystal lenses, so arranged that a chamber for running water exists between them. This part of the apparatus is used to compress the affected area and make it bloodless during the treatment, thus facilitating deeper penetration. The Finsen arc light has been used with marked success in curing many skin diseases, thought until this time incurable, especially lupus and rodent ulcer. During a period of six years the Finsen Medical Light Institute, at Copenhagen, has grown from a very small shed, where they were only able to treat one patient at a time, to a magnificent institution where they are now treating 300 people daily, and light institutes have been established in London, England; St. Petersburg, Russia; Paris, France; and Chicago, Illinois; where they are all carrying on a similar work to the parent institution. It has been a popular belief that lupus was a very rare disease, and common only in the northern countries, and, although it was supposed there was no lupus in London, yet the hospitals are now treating 175 daily, and the management was compelled to install two more lamps and build a separate department, so great has been the demand from people seeking relief. Lupus was considered very rare in the United States, but since the establishment of the Finsen Light Institute in Chicago the author is informed they have been taxed to their utmost capacity, and they, too, have found it necessary to increase their facilities, as there are now patients on the waiting list who are not able to receive treatment. It seems but a question of a short time until light institutes will be established in every large city in America, because it has proven so efficacious in many other skin diseases besides lupus and rodent ulcer, such as acne, alopecia areata, localized eczema, chronic ulcers and nævus. The treatments are given while the patients recline on couches. By firm pressure with the compressors on the tissue to be treated, the blood is removed and more heat can be borne and deeper penetration produced; this compression has another important advantage in that the bactericidal effect is greater because it has been shown that the corpuscles absorb a considerable portion of the rays and thus prevent deep penetration. The affected area is placed about ten inches from the distal end of the converging apparatus, and the treatments, or seances as they are called, take about one hour daily in lupus and rodent ulcer, and in other skin diseases from ten to twenty minutes, depending upon each individual case. The results attained have been hardly less than marvelous, since from carefully compiled statistics covering a series of over 800 cases of lupus treated at the Finsen Institute, an overwhelming percentage of cures and an insignificant number of failures is shown, and Prof. Finsen goes so far as to say that in lupus-vulgaris cures can be obtained in 97 per cent of cases even where the whole face is involved. In these 800 patients, with ages ranging from 5 to 74 years, the average duration of disease was eleven years. This treatment has an advantage over the X-ray in that there is no danger of burning and consequent sloughing. With the light treatment we are dealing with a known quantity, while with the X-ray we have an unknown quantity of uncertain action. The light treatment causes no pain; a red erythematous spot and blister appear where the light is applied, and in five or six days the scab falls off and the ulcer is healed beneath, and the skin is left free from scar or cicatrix, but red, the redness, however, after a variable period fades and leaves the skin white and uncontracted, except where there has been a loss of tissue from the disease before treatment. In conclusion, the author would state that the possibilities for the light treatment in the curing of diseases are still unknown, and believes in a limited time it will take an exalted position in the field of medicine and surgery. 2118 West Lake Street, Chicago. Chicago is Stricken With Pneumonia. Pneumonia has been epidemic in Chicago for the past several weeks. The last week in December claimed 139 victims, or 27 per cent of the total mortality. Pneumonia has also been very prevalent in San Francisco, although we are pleased to say not with the same mortality. THE FINSEN LIGHT-CURE IN ENGLAND. By HERBERT C. FYFE. (From the Scientific American, Nov. 28, 1903.) King Edward and Queen Alexandra paid a visit the other day to the London hospital in order to open three new departments lately added to the hospital. The first of these is known as " Queen Alexandra's Light Department," for Her Majesty was the first to introduce the Finsen lighttreatment into England, presenting a four tube lamp to the London Hospital in 1900. In a large room of the London Hospital, ten lamps of various kinds are being used. In a smaller room cures are being effected by means of the Röntgen rays. The other two departments are the electro-therapeutic, where all kinds of electrical treatment are given, and the radiographic, where photographs are taken for the purpose of locating foreign bodies. Dr. Niels R. Finsen is the director of the five new buildings in Copenhagen known as "Finsen's Medicinske Lysinstitut," which was founded by the Danish government. Since 1890 Finsen has devoted himself to work on phototherapy or the therapeutic influence of the various rays of the solar spectrum. His first great result was the red light treatment for small-pox, which is now being used all over the world with splendid results. The result of the red-light treatment is that suppuration is usually abolished. Scars are extremely rare, and the duration of the disease is shortened. Turning now with renewed energies to his chosen field of research, Finsen soon found that the chemical rays were of inestimable value in curing lupus and like eruptive skin diseases. He finally discovered his world-famous method of treating local superficial bacterial skin diseases by the concentrated chemical rays of light. The method is founded on the following facts, which have been proved after a long series of experiments: 1. That the chemical rays of light (particularly the violet and the ultra-violet) are capable of destroying bacteria. Professor Finsen has found that, on days of bright sunshine, at noon, in July and August, in Copenhagen, sunlight will kill bacteria in a few hours, and that an electric arc lamp has the same bactericidal property. But neither the rays of the sun nor of the electric lamp are sufficiently strong by themselves to kill bacteria growing in the skin; if they were, then all bacterial skin diseases would be cured spontaneously in the summer. Prof. Finsen soon discovered that he must concentrate the light by means of special apparatus in such a way that it contains as many blue, violet and ultra-violet rays as possible. This concentrated light, whether it be sunlight or electric light, will kill in a few seconds bacteria which were destroyed by ordinary light in as many hours. One of the New Ultra-Violet Ray Lamps Designed by 2. That the chemical rays of light can produce an inflammation of the skin; and 3. That these same rays have the power of penetrating the skin. The Finsen treatment may be divided into two varieties: the treatment by sunlight and the treatment by electric light. In the treatment by sunlight, the apparatus used consists of a lens of about 20 to 40 centimeters (7.8 to 14.7 inches) in diameter. The lens is composed of a plane glass and a curved one, both framed in a brass ring. Between them is a light blue, weak, ammoniacal solution of copper sulphate. As one surface of the liquid is plane and the other one curved, its optical function is that of an ordinary plano-convex glass lens. In order to avoid burning the skin of the patient it is necessary to cool the light by eradicating the heat rays of the spectrum, and this the lens accomplishes. By making the lens of a blue liquid instead of solid glass, a considerable cooling of the liquid is effected, for the reason that The Interior of the Finsen Light Institute of Copenhagen. |