The Origins of Color Therapy

Sir Isaac Newton's scientific studies are responsible for the majority of our current understanding of color. But before then, the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all employed color to cure. The Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus wrote about the use of color therapy as early as the first century.

The Arab physician Avicenna wrote on the connection between color and illness and cures in the ninth century. Throughout our history, we have always been fascinated by color.

Every culture has had, and continues to have, connotations with color. The renowned philosopher Aristotle believed that blue and yellow were the genuine primary colors in the fourth century BC since they were related to the sun and moon, male and female, and stimulus and sedation.

Additionally, according to Aristotle, colors correspond to the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air. Before Newton's discoveries in the 17th and 18th centuries supplanted them, many artists borrowed and used his ideas.
Hippocrates, the father of doctors, was an Aristotelian contemporary. He made great use of color in medicine and understood that a white flower would have very different therapeutic benefits than a purple one.

Avicenna, who lived in what is now Iran in the eleventh century, believed that a person's bodily coloring would reveal their susceptibility to different ailments. As a result, he always considered the patient's coloring when making a diagnosis. The renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton released his first contentious paper on color in 1672. Forty years later, he wrote "Opticks."

Newton discovered that different light wavelengths refracted at different angles when he shone white light through a triangular prism. This allowed him to see the distinct colors—he could shine them back through a prism to achieve white light again, but if he shone a single color through a prism, he couldn't see any further breakdown.

But by the 18th century, the term "enlightenment" had acquired a new connotation. It was the moniker of a school of thought in philosophy that emphasized the value of reason and the critical evaluation of preexisting concepts.

 
They were instructed by reason to reject anything that could be questioned and to assume that all knowledge must be clear and unquestionable. Consequently, the term "divine" gradually vanished from the scientific perspective.

 
By the turn of the 19th century, science had completely shifted its focus from the spiritual to the tangible. 

Since medicine was classified as a branch of science, it also overlooked the mind and spirit in favor of concentrating on the physical body. Interest in all forms of "spiritual healing," including color, decreased as medical interventions like surgery and antiseptics became more common. In 1876, it reappeared in North America rather than Europe.

 
At that time, Augustus Pleasanton released his research on how color affects humans, animals, and plants. Red and blue light were utilized by Seth Pancoast in 1877 to balance the autonomic nervous system. Dr. Edwin Babbitt released "The Principles of Light and Color" in 1878. 

COLOR THERAPY CONTRIBUTIONS

 
According to Augustus Pleasanton, growing grapes in glasshouses with alternating blue and transparent panes could greatly improve their quality, yield, and size. By exposing animals to blue light, he also claimed to be able to cure some illnesses, increase fertility, and speed up the physical maturity of animals.

 
Pleasanton insisted that by activating the glands, organs, and neurological system, blue light was also useful in curing human ailments and discomfort. Although his work garnered acceptance, the medical community rejected it as unscientific.

However, in his book "Blue and Red Lights," published in 1877, renowned physician Dr. Seth Pancoast also promoted the use of color in healing. The Principles of Light and Color by Edwin Babbitt was released the next year, and its second edition in 1896 garnered international notice.

 
Babbitt developed a thorough philosophy of color-based healing. He found that red stimulates blood and, to a lesser degree, the nerves; yellow and orange stimulate the nerves, while blue and violet are calming to all systems and have anti-inflammatory qualities. As a result, Babbitt recommended blue for inflammatory diseases, sciatica, meningitis, mental headache, and irritability; yellow as a laxative, emetic, and purgative; and red for paralysis, consumption, muscular weariness, and chronic rheumatism. 

Babbitt created a number of gadgets, such as the Chromo Disk, a funnel-shaped device with special color filters that could localize light onto different parts of the body; the special cabinet known as "The Thermolume," which used colored glass and natural light to create colored light; and solar elixirs, which are colored bottles of water charged by the sun.

 
These kinds of solar elixirs are still produced and utilized in medicine today. By using these techniques, he was able to effectively treat a number of recalcitrant illnesses that the traditional therapies of the day were unable to cure.

Nineteenth-century chromopaths

 
Babbitt's impact led to the rise of chromopaths in the US and Great Britain, who created comprehensive color prescriptions for all possible ailments. Red light was used to stop smallpox scarring by the end of the 1800s, and patients with tuberculosis who were exposed to sunlight and UV radiation later claimed astonishing recovery. The medical community, however, continued to be dubious of any claims regarding color-based therapy.

 
The 20th century

 
Rudolph Steiner, who connected color to form, shape, and sound, was one of the prominent European researchers who conducted studies into the therapeutic applications of color in the early 20th century.

Steiner, Rudolph

 
He proposed that color and shape combinations had either regenerative or destructive effects on living things and that some forms intensify the vibrational nature of particular hues. Classrooms at the schools that were influenced by Steiner's work are painted and textured to reflect the "mood" of the kids at different phases of their growth.

 
Theo Gimbel, who founded the College of Color Therapy in Britain, carried on Steiner's work. Max Luscher's assertions are among the ideas Gimbel examined.

According to Max Luscher, a former psychology professor at Basle University, color preferences can serve as the foundation for both psychological and medical diagnoses because they reveal mental states and/or glandular imbalances. The foundation of the Luscher Color Test is Luscher's theory, which holds that humans' significance for color dates back to their early origins, when night and day ruled behavior.

 
The Theory of Luscher

 
According to Luscher, the hues of yellow and dark blue, which are linked with these two habitats, are related to variations in glandular secretions and metabolic rates that correspond to the energy needed for daytime activities and sleep at night. Additionally, he thought that other hues were linked to autonomic (involuntary) reactions.

S. V. Krakov

By demonstrating that blue activates the parasympathetic portion of the autonomic nervous system and red stimulates the sympathetic portion, the Russian scientist S V Krakov supported Luscher's findings in the 1940s.

 
Gerard, Robert

Robert Gerard of the USA verified Luscher's theories in 1958 when he discovered that blue had a calming impact on tense or nervous subjects whereas red was upsetting. Blue evoked feelings of peace, calmness, and well-being, while red evoked feelings of excitation. Gerard proposed that psychophysiological activation rises with wavelength, from blue to red, after it was shown that blood pressure rises in red light and falls in blue light.

Current Color Therapy

On many levels, including the physical, cerebral, emotional, and spiritual (holistic), color may have a significant impact on us. Numerous further tests and other theories were based on these early therapeutic uses of colored light. Along with a plethora of other alternative therapies, colored light therapy is still utilized today, and many conventional doctors include color in their daily practice.

From reading signs to recognizing ripe fruit by its color, color permeates every aspect of our life. Like everything else, color is all about balance—not too much nor too little—and it can affect our moods.

 
Without realizing it, we use color on a daily basis. Light is merely one type of energy, and color is just light with many wavelengths and frequencies. Color is only a very small portion of the electromagnetic waves of energy that emanate from the universe and surround us.