Hidden histories of light therapy

Abstract

“You have this Edwardian nurse in leg-of-mutton sleeves and steampunk eyeglasses doing something very technical”, explains Natasha McEnroe, Curator of the Florence Nightingale Museum. We're looking at a photograph from around 1900 in the museum's The Kiss of Light exhibition. The nurse is outside using a large lens, known as Finsen's apparatus, to focus direct sunlight onto the face of a woman with lupus vulgaris. The treatment is far less simple than it seems—such nurses knew the risk of burning. In the early 20th century, light therapy was a very popular treatment for various ailments including lupus vulgaris, scrofula, and rickets. It took a skilled technician to administer treatment, and they were almost exclusively women. McEnroe was enthusiastic about running this exhibition in the small, temporary space at the back of museum after being approached by historian Tania Woloshyn, who had uncovered the hidden history of these female technicians through her archival research. Together, Woloshyn and McEnroe designed the exhibition and excellent accompanying book. Many British hospitals administered light therapy to patients, especially in the interwar years. Nurses appear in nearly every photograph of light therapy, whether intimately holding the face of a patient to ensure precise application of light, or entertaining small children who needed reassurance when facing the intimidating apparatus. Yet, McEnroe says, nurses are “totally missing” from medical discussion of the “powerfully bactericidal” effects of light therapy. But the exhibition displays show the all-female nursing team of the Light Department at the Royal London Hospital, who were “praised for their exacting standards and kindness towards patients”, or the staff at the South London Hospital for Women and Children, who were all women. There is a retro futurism about many of these images. We move from Edwardian outfits to 20th-century posters of lurid orange babies and grinning, tanned mothers. Photographs document how light therapy moved away from health care and into the domestic sphere. The picture of the “Homesun” mercury vapour lamp from the 1930s reflects this shift towards light therapy in the home, to which medical professionals were vehemently opposed. There are accounts of people falling asleep in front of their lamps and being burnt, or even, as the exhibition book describes, “being electrocuted while using them in the bathroom”. Health professionals took light therapy seriously from the early days of treatment, because they knew that overdoses could be damaging. But the public's view that “tanned skin” was a reflection of “health” was unstoppable, and “by the late 1920s”, explains McEnroe, “light therapy became conflated with general sunbathing in the public realm”. The museum is responsibly addressing present-day concerns about sun exposure and skin cancer in a series of public events, talks, and lectures, and the museum is also giving visitors Cancer Research UK leaflets about sun safety. It's interesting to note that next door at St Thomas' Hospital there is still a phototherapy department, used mainly for dermatology. However, the focus of the exhibition remains squarely on the role of nurses in light therapy. Many of the images capture curious scenes, such as photographs of children sitting in front of sun lamps in reverential poses, or an electric lamp treatment with four arms branching out from an overhead apparatus over four young patients laid out in separate gurneys, head-to-foot. A nurse wearing leg-of-mutton sleeves, a white cap, and dark pince-nez sunglasses, tends each patient. This somewhat sci-fi image, alongside the many others on display, offers an intimate insight into the hidden histories of light treatment. The Kiss of Light Florence Nightingale Museum, London, UK, until Oct 23, 2015 http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/component/ohanah/the-kiss-of-light.html The Kiss of Light Florence Nightingale Museum, London, UK, until Oct 23, 2015 http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/component/ohanah/the-kiss-of-light.html