But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon …
Shakespeare, W: Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II.
When you live in Arizona, the sun is always with you. Living here makes it easy to understand that the sun has been a central factor in human existence, iconography, and a variety of religions in ancient Egypt, Indo-Europe, and Meso-America since the beginning of recorded or archaeologically defined history. (1,2)
The first scientific writings concerning the benefit of sun therapy emanated from the investigations of Niels Ryberg Finsen, who won the Nobel Prize for his work with heliotherapy (Helios in ancient Greek = sun).(3) Finsen observed the effect of sunlight on his own fragile health. He supplemented these personal observations with experiments on animals and eventually began a series of clinical trials using natural and artificial sunlight therapy for 2 skin conditions: smallpox and tuberculosis of the skin. The dermatologic lesions of both conditions responded to natural and artificial sunlight exposure in these experiments, eventually leading to the Nobel Prize in 1903.(4)
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— Joseph S. Alpert, MD, Editor-in-Chief
This article originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
