Finsen's phototherapy
Fototerapia de Finsen
- Date
- 1893-1896 · confidence high
- Place
- Finsen Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Credited to
- Niels Ryberg Finsen
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Finsen showed that ultraviolet light concentrated with lenses cures lupus vulgaris, a skin tuberculosis, and in 1896 opened the Medical Light Institute in Copenhagen. It was the first effective treatment of lupus vulgaris.
Its efficacy was due partly to ultraviolet light and partly to heat; success occurred in localised lupus vulgaris cases, not internal tuberculosis. It was superseded by antibiotics in the 1940s.
What it led to
- the 1903 Nobel Prize in Medicine
- ultraviolet phototherapy for psoriasis and other skin diseases
- blue-light phototherapy for neonatal jaundice (1950s-1960s)