Soaking Up the Rays: Light Therapy and Visual Culture in Britain, c. 1890–1940 - Hardcover

Cleaves (nee Woloshyn), Tania Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784995126 ISBN 13: 9781784995126

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Soaking up the rays forges a new path for exploring Britain’s fickle love of the light by investigating the beginnings of light therapy in the country from c. 1890–1940. Despite rapidly becoming a leading treatment for tuberculosis, rickets and other infections and skin diseases, light therapy was a contentious medical practice. Bodily exposure to light, whether for therapeutic or aesthetic ends, persists as a contested subject to this day: recommended to counter skin conditions as well as Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression; closely linked to notions of beauty, happiness and well-being, fuelling tourism abroad and the tanning industry at home; and yet with repeated health warnings that it is a dangerous carcinogen.

By analysing archival photographs, illustrated medical texts, advertisements, lamps, and goggles and their visual representation of how light acted upon the body, Woloshyn assesses their complicated contribution to the founding of light therapy.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

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About this title

About the Author

Tania Anne Woloshyn was a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Medical Humanities in the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick from 2012 to 2016 -- .

From the Back Cover

Soaking up the rays is the first book to investigate light therapy's earliest developments in Britain through its visual and material cultures, from 1890 to 1940. Used to treat tuberculosis, rickets, numerous infections, and skin diseases, light therapy emerged internationally in the 1890s at the forefront of modern medicine. By the 1920s it was a leading treatment among the medical community and the public, thanks in no small part to its visual representation.

Woloshyn approaches archival photographs, illustrated medical texts, advertisements, lamps, and goggles as entry points into Britain's history of using light, whether natural (heliotherapy) or artificial (phototherapy), in the fight against disease and 'sun-starvation'. These images and objects actively contributed to light therapy's definition and, above all, represented in visual form how light was conceptualised to act upon the body - but rarely in clear or simple ways. Overexposed and heavily retouched photographs, colour pamphlets of suntanned bodies verging on the radioactive, and Art Deco advertisements of ultraviolet lamps' penetrating rays complicate an easy telling of the therapy's acceptance and appeal.

Bodily exposure to light, whether for therapeutic or aesthetic ends, persists as a contested subject to this day. Soaking up the rays repositions light therapy as a medical practice that was contentious, unstable, and messy from its very inception. It forges a new path for exploring the British (medical, social, and individual) body's fickle love of the light.

It will appeal to those intrigued by medicine's visual culture, especially academics and students of the histories of art and visual culture, material cultures, medicine, science and technology, and popular culture.

From the Inside Flap

Soaking up the rays is the first book to investigate light therapy s earliest developments in Britain through its visual and material cultures, from 1890 to 1940. Used to treat tuberculosis, rickets, numerous infections, and skin diseases, light therapy emerged internationally in the 1890s at the forefront of modern medicine. By the 1920s it was a leading treatment among the medical community and the public, thanks in no small part to its visual representation. Woloshyn approaches archival photographs, illustrated medical texts, advertisements, lamps, and goggles as entry points into Britain s history of using light, whether natural (heliotherapy) or artificial (phototherapy), in the fight against disease and sun-starvation . These images and objects actively contributed to light therapy s definition and, above all, represented in visual form how light was conceptualised to act upon the body but rarely in clear or simple ways. Overexposed and heavily retouched photographs, colour pamphlets of suntanned bodies verging on the radioactive, and Art Deco advertisements of ultraviolet lamps penetrating rays complicate an easy telling of the therapy s acceptance and appeal. Bodily exposure to light, whether for therapeutic or aesthetic ends, persists as a contested subject to this day. Soaking up the rays repositions light therapy as a medical practice that was contentious, unstable, and messy from its very inception. It forges a new path for exploring the British (medical, social, and individual) body s fickle love of the light. It will appeal to those intrigued by medicine s visual culture, especially academics and students of the histories of art and visual culture, material cultures, medicine, science and technology, and popular culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784995126
• ISBN 13: 9781784995126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288