Abstract
IN the beginning, God said, Let There Be Light.” In or before the eighth century B.C., Zarathustra, foremost among many sun-worshippers in many ages, taught the cult of the sun and the green leaf and thrift, in place of pillage and murder. In the beginning of medicine, Hippocrates, practising at Cos in the temples of Esculapius-son of Phcebus Apollo, god of the sun and medicine and music-practised the sun-cure. In the beginning of our era, Galen and Celsus used the sun. In the Dark Ages, by a pitiful misconception, the cult of the sun fell into desuetude as a species of pagan Nature-worship, and ill persons were treated alike in physical and in intellectual night. Tuberculosis and other ills were treated by the Sover-reign touch, reputed to cure the “king's evil.”
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References
"The Geographical Distribution and Ætiology of Rickets”, The Practitioner, October and November 1890.
"Heliotherapy”, by Dr. A. Rollier, with forewords by Sir H. J. Gauvain and Dr. C. W. Saleeby . Oxford Medical Publications, 1923.
Journal of Physiology, vol. xii., 1891, p. 27.
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SALEEBY, C. Sunlight and Disease. Nature 111, 574–576 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111574a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111574a0