Alternative Medicine: Health and Healing with Ultra Violet Carbon Arc Lights  Sun lamp and therapeutic lamp images below lead to the rest of the stories:  An early twentieth-century carbon arc therapeutic lamp is illustrated above. When its carbon rods are touched together and removed with a short gap left between them, a dazzling light, almost as brilliant as the sun, blazes forth for several minutes. Its fire emits an abundance of infrared, visible, and ultra-violet rays that have great therapeutic value. Priests and physicians realized the healing qualities of ultra-violet rays in antiquity, but more recently, doctors rediscovered their value in the nineteenth century after the reintroduction of carbon arc lamps to our modern world. . . .  Therapeutic carbon arc lamps were popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were sold by several companies, HEALTHMASTER, GELB, BRITESUN, and others; and their great healing virtues were dispensed for a steep price. The following advertisement that appeared in Vol. XLVII, No. 1 of Physical Therapeutics magazine, dated January 1929, and those that follow, seem entertaining now but serve as proof of their value: . . . A vintage Graybar Sunshine Carbon Arc Health Lamp, acquired by Larry Brian Radka, the architect of this website, on Ebay, is portrayed in the photographs above and below. It measures about 19 inches in height and 14 in width, and The Saturday Evening Post's 1930 advertisement of this beautiful tanning arc light sets forth some of its other features below: . . . This page was last modified on Sunday, October 05, 2008 |