5. The powerful drug dispensed in the patent or secret. drinks create a thirst which leads to crime and disgrace. 6. It affords opportunity for undesirable commingling of the sexes.

7. It paves the way for the wine and beer garden, and at last for the saloon.

PHOTOTHERAPHY A POTENT THERAPEUTIC AGENT IN THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN MENTAL AND NERVOUS DISEASES.

BY J. CHESTON KING, M.D., ATLANTA.

Phototherapy has its mysterious influence on vegetable and animal life; there is no subject in science which, in its discovery, more immediately claims for itself a higher place from merit alone than this branch of science. Sunlight so common to us all, and yet by far more necessary to each individual, creature and plant in God's creation, is yet, by virtue of its daily appearance, unappreciated. and its powers unrecognized and overlooked. In the composite light of the sun, as you know it, we have brought to us in one beaming whole life's essential of existence.

The sunlight, as we see it through man's ingenuity, has been divided into its component parts, by means of that wonderful instrument, the spectroscope. In this division so made manifest, we are brought face to face with the sublimity of creation and the immeasurable, and to the finite mind of man unappreciable powers of the infinite. These rays of light so essential and so beautiful, and in whose rays we bask each day, contain an essential and in every way the necessary element of cell-nutrition, that which gives the vigor and strength of life, which paints the wondrous hues of every flower in color, bedecks the birds in colors so wondrous that we have what is called the "Bird of Paradise."

In the sunlight, as it warms the earth, there exists for the good of all things certain elements which are recog

nized to be rays of light known as chemical, heat-producing and light-giving. Briefly this sums man's knowledge as to its component parts. Light in its power of painting all things various hues is best illustrated possibly at the face of the earth before us. Where these wondrous rays run riot at the equator a fusion of color bursts upon the sense of man almost startling in its beauty. In the arctic night we find all things subdued and white, the seal and the fox alike change their coat with the six months' lapse of the sun's appearance. These signposts in nature's grand field of observation should draw each one and demand of him to stop and think, and realize that of which this paper is but a slight suggestion, that almost any step that to man becomes an essential to his growth, wellbeing and good health, can be wrested from nature by an increase or decrease as long as experiments of Finsen and others have proven to be true. By learning its secret, we can quiet the restless, nervous system, rapidly increase cell nutrition and thereby producing unlooked-for wonders and growth, irritate the nervous system, when too dormant from disease. In other words, we possess in. this science, yet infantile in its existence, that promise made to us by our Creator, "That in his own image created He them.”

The effect of the Cooper-Hewitt electric light bath is wonderful in cell nutrition. It is the most effective of all means of producing general and local effects, by dilating the cutaneous vessels. The reddening of the skin begins within a very few moments after the influence of the light is brought to bear. The effect of such an application is to fix the blood in the skin by converting the passive venous congestion into an active arterial hyperemia, in which the peripheral heart is brought into active play.

The nervous system is stimulated through impressions upon the skin and the nervous sensibility is lessened to a

marked extent. This is accomplished by the absorption of moisture in the terminal nerve filaments of the skin.

In my practice of mental and nervous diseases, I have b.come especially interested in electro-photography as a potent therapeutic agent in certain lines of nervous disorders. I inaugurated in Howell Park Sanitarium the Cooper-Hewitt cabinet baths.

The indications for its use are:

I. In that class of cases where I wished to produce a general dilatation of the cutaneous vessels and to convert venous congestion into active arterial hyperemia.

2. To increase the oxidizing power of the blood and thus bring about tissue metabolism. It is well known that light exercises a decided influence in throwing off the oxygen in the hemoglobin, not so with darkness.

3. It facilitates assimilation and metabolism, thus indicated in all cases of cerebral anemia.

4. In those cases where there is a high nervous or mental tension, it has no equal as a sudorific measure, and thereby acts as an analgesic, but not as an anodine deadening pain.

5. For tonic effect, we have at our command no other means that excels a twenty-minutes application each day. A sensation of warmth being similar to that experienced by one who stands before a glowing fire is most pronounced, and when followed by proper hydratic application the stimulation and nutrition is of the highest possible degree.

Phototheraphy is in a field peculiarly its own, in which it is unique. It stands closely to nature's great restorer in balancing the circulation and thereby establishing the primary condition essential to aid the recuperative powers of the body in their effort to re-establish a practically normal condition of the blood, which blood gives that nutrition to each organ so essential to life.

These statements are not made at random, but after ample experience in my sanitarium which I shall later tabulate. Phototeraphy is not hostile to any other mode of cure.

We, as a body of scientists, seeking day by day for a panacea for different human ailments, realize that all the agents at our command are yet inadequate to supply the demand for relief from pain and disease. All the forces of medicine need more help and not less. Therefore, I commend this new therapeutic agent to your consideration and study.