It has been recently stated, that the cases of disease in the dark side of an extensive barrack at St. Petersburgh, have been uniformly, for many years, in the proportion of THREE to one to those on the side exposed to a strong light.
Dupuytren relates the case of a lady whose maladies had baffled the skill of several eminent practitioners. This lady resided in one of the narrow streets of Paris, and in a dark room in which the sun never shone. After a careful examination, Dupuytren was led to refer her complaints to the absence of light, and recommended her removal to a more cheerful situation: the change was followed by the most beneficial results; all her complaints in a very short time vanished.
In a series of experiments made by Mr. Simon upon cats, which that gentleman confined in dark cellars, he found after death disease of the kidney, resembling that morbid state of the gland generally known as morbus Brightii (Bright’s disease), and, in other cases, incipient fatty degeneration of the liver.
Humboldt has remarked, that among several nations of South America, who wear very little clothing, he never met with a single individual with a natural deformity; and the celebrated Linneus, in his account of his tour through Lapland, enumerates constant exposure to solar light as one of the causes which render a summer’s journey through high northern latitudes so peculiarly healthful and invigorating; whilst the reverse is observed in less favoured regions—
—————————— “beyond Tornea’s Lake,
And farthest Greenland, to the Pole extreme,
Where, failing gradual, Life itself goes out;
There Winter holds his unrelenting court.
Near the wild Oby live the last of men!
There, half-enliven’d by the distant Sun,