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38
had exceptional experience in artificial light therapy.
Certain of the Health Visitors have been instructed in
the routine use of the lamp and the necessary precautions
to be taken, and light treatment is given three
times a week. Four patients are usually treated at a
time. The cost of the treatment itself is extraordinarily
low, the lamp being estimated to consume one unit
per hour, which, at the present cost of electric current,
is 2d. per hour for the first 60 and thereafter ½d.
per hour.
Dr. Mackay reports as follows:
Children attending this special clinic are all sent on by the
Medical Officers in charge of the other Clinics. The work is largely
concerned with the investigation of, and an endeavour to find the
remedy for, cases of ill-defined poor health as exemplified by children
who do not "get on." As this necessitates an exhaustive
enquiry into home conditions and management as well as complete
physical examination of the patient, much time is spent in detailed
history taking and in instruction of the mother, such as would unduly
hold up the work of an ordinary infant clinic. Other children are
sent with specific illnesses or defects ranging from hemi- atrophy to
chronic intestinal indigestion, rickets or the late effects of encephalitis.
With the co-operation of Dr. Keith, a special effort is being
made to pass on all available information to the clinic from which the
child was sent. It is hoped that this may bring about better coordination
in the work of this clinic and that of the others.
Investigations have also been carried out with the aim of
obtaining objective evidence as to the effect of artificial light treatment
on the weight of children protected from rickets by other means,
and on the percentage of haemoglobin in the blood. The results were
negative, so emphasising once more the need of far more research
before the field of usefulness of light treatment can be actually
delimited. Of course, such negative results do not in any way
invalidate the positive evidence existing as to the curative effects
of light in rickets and tetany.

H.M.M. Mackay, M.D.