History
Many ancient cultures practiced various forms of heliotherapy, including people of the Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Rome. The Inca, Assyrian and early German settlers also worshipped the sun as a health bringing deity. Indian medical literature dating to 1500 BC describes a treatment combining herbs with natural sunlight to treat non-pigmented skin areas. Buddhist literature from about 200 AD and 10th-century Chinese documents made similar references.
Faroese physician Niels Finsen is believed to be the father of modern phototherapy. He developed the first artificial light source for this purpose, and used his invention to treat lupus vulgaris. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1903.
Since then a large array of treatments have been developed from the use of controlled light. Though the popular consumer understanding of "light therapy" is associated with treating seasonal affective disorder and skin conditions like psoriasis, other applications include the application of low level laser, red light, near-infrared and ultraviolet lights for pain management, hair growth, skin treatments, and accelerated wound healing.
Read more about this topic: Light Therapy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)